Deadline: December 20, 2022
Contact: James Armstrong, Full Professor, Winona State University, Friends of William Stafford
Email: jarmstrong@winona.edu
Phone: 5074541759
Panel proposed at the 2023 ASLE + AESS Conference: “Reclaiming the Commons”
July 9-12, 2023 in Portland, Oregon
Oregon’s most famous poet is William Stafford, a National Book Award recipient, U.S. Special Consultant to the Library of Congress (now called Poet Laureate), and author of over 60 books. Stafford’s poetry assumes a companionable commonality with the things of this world, people, animals, the other than human. Robert Bly wrote, “Of all the American poets of the last thirty years, I think William Stafford broods most about community, the ‘mutual life’ we share.” Stafford’s poem “Deer Stolen” observes, “Some small deer’s foot / might hold the way, might be a start / that means in ways beyond our ken.” Stafford’s relational vision was deeply informed by his experience of the landscapes of the West (especially of the Great Plains and the forests and mountains of Oregon), by his work as a pacifist and teacher, and by his exploration of indigenous philosophy. His poetic task was to develop an alternative to the colonizing narratives of his country. In his poem, “Allegiances,” Stafford writes, “It is time for all the heroes to go home / if they have any, time for all of us common ones / to locate ourselves by the real things /we live by… and love /where we are, sturdy for common things.” For Stafford, who was a lifelong pacifist, “heroes” have forgotten that the commons are, as Lewis Hyde comments in Common as Air, “the rights, customs, and institutions that organize and preserve its [the commons] communal purposes.” Stafford invites all heroes to relocate, to regain the “sturdiness” gained, not by brutal domination, but by interconnectedness. He employs a figurative multilingualism that knows, as Heraclitus says, “the logos is common to all.” Anyone interested in developing these thoughts and/or exploring related ones is invited to join this panel.
Submit a proposal to James Armstrong (jarmstrong@winona.edu) by December 20, 2022.
Posted on October 9, 2022
