William Stafford

INTERVIEWER: In your book Down in My Heart, you write out of a need to continue a conversation with George, a conscientious objector you knew who wound up in prison because of his beliefs. Do you generally feel as though you’re entering into some sort of conversation when you write?

STAFFORD: I do often feel that kind of connection with the reader. I like being straight across from the reader, communicating with a peer—not preaching to someone or worshiping someone, but talking to an equal. I don’t want to give the impression that this is something I’ve elected; I just feel that way. I feel the possibility of resentment if I’m demeaned by talking up to someone. And I am apprehensive about patting people on the head. Instead, it’s a back and forth with the people in your town, in your street, in the field where you’re working, or the camp where you are. Just this afternoon my son, Kim, was talking about the ethical problems of writing a nonfiction piece about another person. I wanted to interrupt and say the obligation I feel is to the people I’m writing to. I don’t feel the need to be as careful about people I’m writing about, though it would disquiet me if I were putting out advice or signals that lead someone into ways of life I would consider harmful to them or to others. It would make a difference to me.

INTERVIEWER:Do you have a sense of conversing with dead poets?

STAFFORD: No, I don’t. I converse with live poems. It doesn’t make any difference—it sounds like a brutal thing—to me whether the authors are alive or dead. It’s their poems I’m reading. Thomas Hardy and Wordsworth are appealing to me, and I feel that I am in their presence. I read the best I can get wherever it is. I don’t care how long ago it was written.