Three amigos bringing in the New Year at Alma del Sol in Guanajuato, Mexico: Johnny Stallings, Hugo Anaya & Kim Stafford.

 

THE OPEN ROAD

peace, love, happiness & understanding

 

July 16, 2020

 

I asked Kim Stafford if he would write something for our newsletter about his experience as Poet Laureate. Like the generous writer and human being described in his essay, he said “Yes.”

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To Be a Better Person

My 100 poetry events as Oregon’s 9^th Poet Laureate

 

When I met the Poet Laureate of Linn-Benton Community College I learned what my work as a poet is really about. This student poet, chosen by his teachers to serve as a writer and reader of poems at various campus events for a year, was telling me about his work teaching writing at the juvenile detention center as a volunteer, sharing poems with fellow students, opening meetings with a poem, and other acts of generous incantation. Then he said it: “I don’t write poems to become a better poet. I write poems to become a better person.”

 

That’s it! That’s what poetry is for—the writing of it, the reading of it, teaching, sharing, posting, publishing, handing off to a friend in need of lyric buoyancy. It’s not just a literary activity. It’s a human activity, a way to become more awake, more human, humane, compassionate, alive, and connected.

 

I wish I could remember that student’s name, but I will never forget what he taught me. And maybe something like that will be the legacy of my own work as wandering bard in Oregon. Years after I’m gone, people in little towns will say, “This guy came and told us the great thing about poetry is you can’t make money doing it—so you are completely free in how you do it. I can’t remember his name, but he said a poem could save your life. He said a poem could make you live at a deeper level, closer to community, more ready to take hard things in life as they come, and to help others with gentle words.”

 

As Oregon’s 9^th Poet Laureate from May 2018 through May 2020, I was a sitting duck, but a willing one. There was an “event request form” on the website of the Oregon Cultural Trust, and it took about five minutes for anyone—a librarian, teacher, writer, reader, or other individual—to fill out the form, it would come to me, and I could not say no. Would I drive to the Alvord Desert to read poems as part of an open air piano concert (with Hunter Noack of www.inalandscape.org)? Yes! Would I drive to Klamath Falls to read poems…to Gold Beach…to Astoria…to Madras, Stayton, Astoria, the Umatilla Reservation at Tamástslikt Cultural Center? Oh yes. Would I write with veterans for the V.A. Hospital? Would I work with inmates at Coffee Creek Women’s Prison, Columbia River Correctional Institution, at the Two Rivers Correctional Institution? Yes, of course. Would I do an assembly for 120 primary students…for seventeen immigrants becoming citizens…for the Oregon House of Representatives…for a winery, a business association, a city council? Absolutely. Would I meet with one young writer full of fury and eloquence to help her onto the path of poetry? Yes.

 

The job was a two-year rush of such encounters where all kinds of people wrote all kinds of things, and I traveled to meet with them and together raise the human spirit. 

 

Now that the torch has been passed to a new Oregon Poet Laureate, Anis Mojgani (his event-request form is here: https://culturaltrust.org/oregon-poet-laureate/calendar/), I still feel I have the calling of poet as servant of the people. Since my official term ended in May, I’ve taught a class online in Scotland, done a radio interview with a station in Newport, put poetry prompts and other writer resources on my website (www.kimstaffordpoet.com), given several poetry readings online, and hatched public service projects with other artists for individuals and families sheltering at home.

 

In a way, the job of a poet laureate is the same as the job of any writer: Something came to my page that I would love to share with you. It’s about discovery, generosity, and connection:

 

Dew & Honey

Sip by sip in thimble cup

the meadow bees will drink it up

then ferry home to bounty’s hive

by flowers’ flavor hum and thrive

to show us how through word and song

by gesture small and patience long

in spite of our old foolish ways

we may fashion better days.

 

So, my friend, come sip and savor

syllables as crumbs of pleasure.

By sunrise, in our conversations,

we begin a better nation.

 

—Kim Stafford

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Before visiting our dialogue group at Two Rivers prison, Kim wrote this poem and brought it with him as a gift for the men in the group:

 

Two Rivers

 

One river flows above ground—

everyone can see it shining

across the land, following the valley

and shaping the valley, never at rest.

 

And some people say, I know who

you are…I know what you’ve done…

what you lost…where you came from…

where you are going. I know.

 

But what do they know of you, really?

For another river flows below all that,

invisible, at the speed of a dream

inside you—intuitive, curious, innocent.

 

And you say, I know who I want to be…

I know what I’ve learned…I know what I love…

I need to know who I really am. So you remember,

you wonder, you write, you shape story,

 

and you say to yourself on the page,

Hidden river, spill your secrets

at the wellspring. I hold forth

my cup no one else can see.

 

—Kim Stafford

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The ending of his poem reminds me of this brief quote from Sylvia Plath:

 

So many people are shut up tight inside themselves like boxes, yet they would open up, unfolding quite wonderfully if only you were interested in them.

 

—Sylvia Plath

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In the spirit of Kim’s essay, here’s some life advice from Walt Whitman:

 

This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.

 

from the preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

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Recently, I was listening to a talk Cornel West gave at the University of Oregon on April 26, 2019 called “What It Means to Be Human.” It’s always a joy to be enlivened by his lively mind! Here’s a link: 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aekb3ppKm5w&t=480s

 

I was talking with Kim about “the poet’s job.”  A short time later he sent me some of his aphorisms on the subject. Here they are:

 

It is the poet’s job to turn fact into food, loss into learning, and pain into song. 

 

The poet’s work is to be the Eric Snowden of the inner life: All shall be revealed.

 

All a writer can do is compose clues to what can never be spoken, footnotes to the inexpressible.

 

A poet’s remedy for myriad troubles: Cook up a feast of words, and see what you learn.

 

Like a bird lifting from a twig, the poet steps away from all freight. Even as you plod the road, your soul is in flight.

 

A poet’s work is to compose a filmed parade of images with a sound track of percussive words.

 

Poetry is the moonlight of the interior life—waxing and waning, causing the soul to flood and ebb.

 

Everyone should compose their own text for the tee shirt they wear along the summer avenue—so we could be known by what we are willing to say.

 

—Kim Stafford

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And he sent some quotes from other poets:

 

The poet’s job is to put into words those feelings we all have that are so deep, so important, and yet so difficult to name, to tell the truth in such a beautiful way, that people cannot live without it.

 

—Jane Kenyon

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Poetry isn’t a profession, it’s a way of life. It’s an empty basket; you put your life into it and make something out of that.

 

—Mary Oliver

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Want to take workshop from Kim? Go to his website, click on workshops, and sign up for one. Here’s the link:

 

www.kimstaffordpoet.com

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I recently read Susan Griffin’s long essay “The Eros of Everyday Life” again. I read it with the kind of pleasure I’ve been getting from standing in the backyard in the summer sun, picking blackberries, putting them into my mouth one at a time and crushing them between my tongue and the top of my mouth. Here’s a quote:

 

Everything I encounter permeates me, washes in and out, leaving a tracery, placing me in that beautiful paradox of being by which I am both a solitary creature and everyone, everything.

 

—Susan Griffin

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That’s it for now, y’all. Until next time…

 

—Johnny