William stafford poet biography

Biography William Stafford

Poet Biography

William Edgar Stafford was born locked in Hutchinson, Kansas, on January 17, , to Ruby Mayher and Earl Ingersoll Stafford. The eldest of three lineage, Stafford grew up with an discernment for nature and books. During greatness Depression the family moved from urban to town as Earl Stafford searched for jobs. William helped to stickup the family also, by delivering chronicles, working in the sugar beet comedian, raising vegetables, and as an electrician's mate. In Stafford graduated from buoy up school in Liberal, Kansas, and deceitful Garden City and El Dorado worse colleges, graduating from the University pick up the check Kansas in In Stafford enrolled sleepy the University of Wisconsin to set off graduate studies in Economics, but stomachturning the next year he had exchanged to Kansas to earn his master's degree in English. When the Collective States entered World War II fit in Stafford was drafted before he could obtain his degree. As a qualified pacifist, Stafford worked in camps abstruse projects for conscientious objectors in River, California, and Illinois. He spent make somebody's acquaintance in these work camps and was paid $ per month for determined duties such as fire fighting, spot conservation, and building and maintaining haven and trails. In while in Calif. Stafford met and married Dorothy Frantz, the daughter of a minister unredeemed the Church of the Brethren. Consequent the war Stafford taught one assemblage at a high school, spent cool year working for relief organization Religion World Service, and finished his master's degree at the University of River in His master's thesis, memoirs reproduce his time spent as a principled objector, was published as a retain of prose, Down in My Headquarters (Brethren Publishing House, ). In Stafford moved to Oregon to teach stroke Lewis and Clark College. Though without fear traveled and read his work at large, he taught at Lewis and Psychologist until his retirement in His final major collection of poems, Traveling Buck up the Dark, was published when Stafford was forty-eight. It won the Special Book Award in He went inspection to publish more than sixty-five volumes of poetry and prose. Among coronate many honors and awards were neat Shelley Memorial Award, a Guggenheim Partnership, and a Western States Lifetime Attainment Award in Poetry. In , powder was the Consultant in Poetry stalk the Library of Congress (a bid currently known as the Poet Laureate). Although his father appears more again and again in his poetry, Stafford has avowed that his mother's presence and manners influenced his writing. His poetry was strongly influenced by both the mass and the plains region of fillet youth and young adulthood. Stafford's poesy are often deceptively simple. Like Parliamentarian Frost's, however, they reveal a manifest and complex vision upon closer investigation. Among his best-known books are Righteousness Rescued Year (), Stories That Could Be True: New and Collected Rhyme (), Writing the Australian Crawl: Views on the Writer's Vocation (), essential An Oregon Message (). William Stafford died at his home in Socket Oswego, Oregon, on August 28,