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William and Earl Stafford: Inheriting a Sense of Heroism

Hanna Larson

He was a pacifist, but he was not passive. Kim Stafford, Early Morning, ix
The presence of his father in William Staffords poetry is one that many critics note.
George Lensing and Ronald Moran write of Staffords harkening back to the world of his
childhood, which is dominated by the figure of the father who appears in dozens of Staffords
poems. In these poems, the father is always regarded from a point of view of the son who has
survived him, but who continues to look to him as preceptor and guide (187). His father is
someone Stafford looked up to. Laurence Lieberman says Staffords father is an incorporated
part of his own personality (22) and Earls presence in Staffords poetry indicates how he was
haunted by his voice up until his own death. He was a man William continually turned to for
guidance throughout the years even after his death, even though to hear his fathers words meant
that all William had to do was turn inward, for there is where his father lived on.
Most critics when talking about the relationship between William and Earl Stafford in
Williams poetry discuss the influence of the father on the sons listening and recognition of little
details, specifically listening to nature. The father is described by Ralph Mills Jr. as having
uncanny wisdom and perceptual powers which [t]he son inherits this talent, discovers in it a
way for reading the significance of the apparently insignificant (45). Peter Stitt calls him a
nature mystic who instilled in his son a sense of the mystery inherent in nature, a love for the
stories that might unlock it (Stitt 182). The prevalence of the wilderness, nature imagery, and
listening in Williams poetry shows just how deep these lessons have been ingrained in him.

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The father figure who appears in Williams poetry often takes on different forms. Which
father is the true Earl Stafford? Kim Stafford asked his father this very question and wrote,
What was the truth of it all? Was his father cruel, as an early poem has it? Well, my father
said once, that poem needed my father to be cruel, but that wasnt how it was. (219). It is hard
to separate the voice of the speaker and William Stafford once you hear him recite his poetry
because of the ease of his tone; it is then extended to the idea of the father figure in Staffords
poems. While the father figure appears so prominently in countless Stafford poems, we have to
understand that the father in the poem is not necessarily Earl Stafford himself and the words
William ascribes to him are not necessarily his words. Peter Stitt notes that amid several
poems in which Staffords speaking character talks of his father as a kind and gentle man, there
are a few poems that portray him as cold, indifferent, cruel. We must recognize that different
poems may demand different fathers, just as they demand slightly different versions of the same
basic central character (180). What is fact and what is fiction? Did his father really say these
words? Judith Kitchen talks about the truth of events in Staffords poems, asking these same
questions, Did this event really happen? Does it come from the writers life? Those might be the
first questions. This cannot be know or rather, it is not important to know. What is important is
that the reader believe that it happened (Kitchen 40). He may be the archetypal or universal
father (Lensing 188) in one poem and the real, down to earth, Earl Stafford in the next. What is
important to consider is that the reader believes that the father figure in any given Stafford poem
is real to Stafford in some way.
What do we know about the real Earl Stafford, then? We can gather some clues from
what William says about him in interviews from Writing the Australian Crawl. William
describes his feelings about his father with Cynthia Lofsness in this way:

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Well, I feel very positive in favor of my father. Ive talked to quite a number of
writers who have felt rebellion. My father was always very sympathetic and
helpful and sort of a level equitable person throughout my life, steady with
counsel, but not intruding. All my life long Ive had a feeling of not of
rebellion, because there was no oppression there was a kind of interest and even
surprise and delight, but no oppression at all. I feel very positively about him and
I suppose it shows in my poetry. (Interview with Stafford 101)
The Stafford family traveled quite a bit due to Earls job with an electric company. He was also
an avid lover of reading. William, in You Must Revise Your Life, says that [h]e carried pieces
around in his billfold, things he wrote, things I wrote. He was carrying Annabel Lee when he
died. He was never a scholar, just addicted to reading and to entering that realm from his side,
too (4). He died in 1942 while William was away at a camp for Conscientious Objectors during
World War II. The fact that William was away for Earls death may be one of the reasons we
know so little about who the real Earl Stafford was. William continues to struggle with finding
closure, as seen profoundly in his poem Circle of Breath (The Way It Is 62).
The night my father died the moon shone on the snow.
I drove in from the west; mom was at the door.
All the light in the room extended like a shadow.
Truant from knowing, I stood where the great dark fell.

There was a time before, something we used to tell

how we parked the car in a storm and walked into a field
to know how it was to be cut off, out in the dark alone.

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My father and I stood together while the storm went by.

A windmill was there in the field giving its little cry

while we stood calm in ourselves, knowing we could go home.
But I stood on the skull of the world the night he died, and knew
that I leased a place to live with my white breath.

Truant no more, I stepped forward and learned his death.

His continued return to the subject of his father and the puzzling out of his different fathers is
one prominent theme in Williams poetry. The life lessons and habits he inherited from his father
carry beyond the poetry simply about his father, showing just how deep Earls influence went.
Regardless of the truth of Earl in Staffords poems, the presence of the father as a guide
and mentor in Staffords poetry reveals the specific theme in his work: bravery and heroism.
Critics note the presence of Earl in William and his poetry in different ways, but they have
overlooked the importance of this theme in connection to Earl. This theme of bravery and
heroism is divided into three main categories: maturing and becoming a heroic or brave man,
memorializing the heroic dead, and military heroism. We can see of this first subdivision with
the poem A Farewell, Age Ten (The Way It Is 168). In this poem, the young William pets a
rabbit at his Uncles house. When his father tells him it is time to go, he will leave the rabbit and
follow his father. He says, Like [my father], I will be strong all of my life. / We are men. This
resolve feels good, but he will never touch the rabbit again. The young Stafford in this poem
wants to be like his father, a strong man who doesnt reveal his emotions about the rabbit. But
there is sadness in saying goodbye. The present day Stafford reflects on his coming of age as a

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time when he adopts this resolve to be a strong man. Stafford says in You Must Revise Your
Life how excited he was at a young age to feel his fathers acceptance of him as a man. His father
says to young William, Bill, maybe your eyes are better than mine. Maybe you will be able to
see the hawk. William recalls his feeling, saying, This remark was not the only move he made
of that kind, of course; but it sticks in my mind as an emblem. I was a partner; I verged on being
grown-up. My father was contending, ready to win, ready to lose (6). William looked up to his
father and looked for his approval for being a grown-up. The sentiment of being strong and
brave like his father in A Farewell, Age Ten shows how William saw his father as a model for
bravery and manhood.
Another example of the fathers influence on Staffords maturity that speaks to this poem
is Mouse Night: One of Our Games, from Traveling Through the Dark.
We heard thunder. Nothing great on high
ground rain began. Who ran through
the rain? I shrank, a fieldmouse, when
the thunder came under grass with bombs
of water scything stems. My tremendous
father cowered: Lions rushing make
that sound, he said; Well be brain-washed
for sure if head-size chunks of water hit us.
Duck and cover! It takes a man
to be a mouse this night, he said.
This poem actually gives the father a voice, which as mentioned above, is a little tricky because
we dont know for sure if Earl Stafford actually said these exact words. This poem begins on a

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dark and stormy night. A young Stafford fears the thunder and the bombs / of water scything
stems. Staffords father responds to this situation by cowering himself and saying, Well be
brain-washed / for sure if head-size chunks of water hit us. / Duck and cover! It takes a man / to
be a mouse this night. The word game in the title suggests a playful tone, and yet there is a lot
of fear and violent imagery in the poem. In a stereotypical situation, the father figure might
reassure the fearful child and the child would still feel scared, but reassured by the protection of
the parent. The father in this poem cowers along with his son, saying Duck and cover! In a
traditional sense, this father figure is not heroic and overly masculine. He doesnt stand up to the
storm, but makes his son aware that there are natural phenomena in the world that he should fear.
The son asks, Who ran through / the rain? and the father says, Lions rushing make / that
sound. The lions dont fear the rain, and they are the ones caught in it. The last thing he says to
his son is It takes a man / to be a mouse this night. He admits thats its alright to be afraid
when there is cause to be afraid. A true man doesnt pretend the storm isnt a threat, but
acknowledges the power of the storm and does the smart thing, not the heroic thing like the lions
of the poem, but the smart, fieldmouse thing and stays inside.
This poem informs the reader that being a man is more about doing the smart thing rather
than doing the heroic thing, and Stafford thought of his father as a hero for that. This poem
speaks to the poem situated right next to it in Traveling Through the Dark, Parentage, which
discusses the difference between the father and sons worldview (The Way It Is 82).
My father didnt really belong in history.
He kept looking over his shoulder at some mistake.
He was a stranger to me, for I belong.

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There never was a particular he couldnt understand,

but there were too many in too long a row,
and like many another he was overwhelmed.

Today drinking coffee, I look over the cup

and want to have the right amount of fear,
preferring to be saved and not, like him, heroic.

I want to be as afraid as the teeth are big,

I want to be as dumb as the wise are wrong:
Id just as soon be pushed by events to where I belong.
Peter Stitt writes in his essay William Staffords Wilderness Quest that the father attempts to
know and understand the world by trying to control it, subject it to his own categorizing mind
(183). Parentage seems to say that by trying to understand all the particulars of the world, his
father became overwhelmed. This is what Stafford is critiquing about his father his need to
understand the world. Stafford does not try to understand the world, but live in it, to belong.
He views his fathers method as heroic, an active role. Instead of fearlessly participating in the
world, Stafford wants to have the right amount of fear, allowing the world to affect him. He
would rather be passive, preferring to be saved instead of doing the saving. This isnt a
weakness or a lack of bravery, but an attitude about allowing the world to guide him. Its an
awareness of what the world is truly like instead of ignoring the parts we dont understand in a
rave act of heroism. This attitude speaks directly to sentiments expressed in Mouse Night: One
of Our Games.

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The father in Mouse Night teaches the son that it is alright to be afraid when there is
cause to be afraid, and the last few lines of Parentage declare the same lesson. The last few
lines of Parentage are I want to be as afraid as the teeth are big, / I want to be as dumb as the
wise are wrong: / Id just as soon be pushed by events to where I belong. Stafford wants to
have the right amount of fear, which means his fear should be in line with the amount of danger.
If the teeth are really big, then his fear will also be big and vice versa. He doesnt want to worry
about the small fears. He allows the dangers of the world to affect his fear in a linear way. In
Parentage, this wisdom comes from a present day Stafford looking back, almost critically at
his fathers worldview while the wisdom in Mouse Night comes from the father who the child
looks up to. These two poems seem to have the same root message of allowing fear to affect a
person, but the contradiction comes from who the lesson is coming from. The lesson is learned in
Mouse Night and parroted back to the father in Parentage. Is the older William Stafford
saying his own father didnt live up to his creed about being a smart man rather than a heroic
man? Did Earl forget what he had told young William?
Regardless of which version of the father in these poems is true, either the one giving the
lesson of the one being refuted for his heroic need to understand the world, this idea of being a
true man and allowing fear to affect him is a lesson from his father that Stafford carried with him
into adulthood and into his writing. Instead of being brave and heroic and ignoring fear, Stafford
has the right amount of fear. He is honest about what scares him, a true man, brave in the
sense of his awareness of the world, a different kind of heroism. Because these two poems are
physically close to each other in their placement in Traveling Through the Dark and their content
concerning Staffords father is so closely aligned, we can guess that Stafford learned how to be a
brave man in his fear from his father, even if his father didnt say those exact words.

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Going back to the word choice in Mouse Night leads into the next subdivision of
Staffords learned theme of heroism from his father, which is the connection to his pacifism. In
Mouse Night, the father uses terms like brain-washed and Duck and cover!, which evoke
terms used during the Cold War and Red Scare in war propaganda and nuclear bomb safety
videos. However, we know that Earl Stafford died in 1942, before the end of World War II and
the start of the Cold War. The direct quote from the poem may not carry the connection of the
Cold War tension and communism fear. However, Stafford gave these words to his father, and
these connections are significant to Stafford as a pacifist and Conscientious Objector during
World War II. By giving these words to his father, Stafford suggests that his pacifism can be
directly traced from his fathers teachings.
William Staffords pacifism and his time as a CO define his view on violence and
categorize his brand of bravery. Williams son Kim explored his fathers heroism through peace
throughout his book Early Morning: Remembering My Father, William Stafford. He says that at
CO Camp, his father developed his own type of heroism,
In this camp school my father developed his lifelong habits of writing each day
before dawn, of honoring fellow seekers of understanding from whatever
background, of seeing in human cruelty episodes where we let the fragile
sequence break, but also might by heroic calm find our way back into
community. Heroic calm: the courage to not agree when those around you
capitulate by saying All diplomatic alternatives to war have been exhausted
(47).
Judith Kitchen says that his choice to register as a pacifist was a courageous one. World War II
was a popular war; to be a conscientious objector was to remove oneself from the mainstream of

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society (4). His choice to hold on to his convictions and not give in was brave and lonely, for
his pacifism during the popular war was often met with hate. And yet, he held his ground.
Williams brother, Bob, was a fighter pilot during World War II, and while this fact and his
brothers pacifism might have caused a rift between the two, Bob loved and respected his
brother. He told him once in 1946, Bill, were both heroes, but your heroism is a harder kind
(Kim Stafford xiii). Stafford doesnt call himself a hero. This is a term he ascribes to those he
admired and looked up to.
When Stafford talks about his heroes in his poetry, those figures are usually dead.
Stafford doesnt start including his father in his poetry until after his death in 1942, in which he
calls his father a hero or talks about his bravery in the abstract. In his later poem Third Street,
Stafford still sees his father as a figure who saved him (The Way It Is 4-5). He often reflected on
his father in his poetry from the vantage point of a child, looking up at his heroic father, placing
him on a pedestal above himself. He is a young boy again in this poem, sick and close to death,
but his father is the one he remembers caring for him and saving him. He remembers the look
on his fathers face, the fear in his eyes for his child, the uncertainty he can be saved. Stafford
writes Years later my son will die and that look / will return. Something will break in the sky
that was welded / and forged back home by a thousand pledges of truth. Stafford is referring to
the death of his son Bret, who committed suicide. Kim Stafford recalls how Stafford didnt really
talk about Brets death, but that his true feelings came out in his poetry after Brets death.
Staffords poem, A Memorial: Son Bret, shows Stafford again honoring the memory of
the dead through heroic poetry (The Way It Is 16). He calls his son a hero, a true man, like his
own father. Stafford writes You turned once to tell me something, / but then you glimpsed a
shadow on my face / and maybe thought, Why tell what hurts? / You carried it, my boy, so

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brave, so far. Just like Stafford learned in A Farewell, Age Ten, Bret was brave for holding
on to his emotions and carrying them on his own. Tragically, Stafford was unable to save his
son, despite his fathers example. George Lensing and Ronald Moran say that The heroic
pattern of the fathers life serves as a model for the aspirant son, but ultimately it is unattainable
(189). Stafford sees his close relatives who have passed away as the true heroes, not himself.
Like he says in his early poem It Was This Way, Again today I have not saved the world.
Stafford finds heroes in his family who have passed, but some of the heroes he invokes in
his poetry he doesnt praise so highly. Two examples of his critiques of heroes we typically
honor include At the Un-National Monument along the Canadian Border and Dropout. At
the Un-National Monument along the Canadian Border talks about a field that no one goes to
because there was no battle there (The Way It Is 56). He says No people killed or were killed
on this ground / hallowed by neglect and an air so tame / that people celebrated it by forgetting
its name. As mentioned previously, Staffords attention to the wilderness is an important aspect
in his work. The place in this poem is not a national monument, but wilderness, where the only
heroic thing is the sky. In this poem, Stafford is questioning the fact that people honor
battlefields and not nature.
Another example of Staffords critique of typical heroes is in his poem Dropout (The
Way It Is 164). In this poem, Stafford recalls two high school kids who went on to become
soldiers World War II and how one of them came home to get a job with the FBI. These figures
are celebrated, while You looked through the smoke / and the smoky jokes, and vomited. Here,
Stafford gives names and faces to soldiers who have been honored for their military service.
These men in particular he calls bullies for their treatment of others and their vandalizing of the
school gym for fun. There is a clear critique of who gets turned into a hero when looking at

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these two poems side by side. In Dropout, the bullies get honored with speeches and high
ranking government jobs, while in At the Un-National Monument the wilderness isnt
memorialized, but the battlefields are. Being a pacifist, Stafford doesnt agree with any kind of
violence and is saddened by the fact that people find violence synonymous with heroism. The
allegiances that Stafford feels are to people and place (Kitchen 55), not people who commit
violence and battlefields. The heroes for Stafford are his family and those who had internal
heroism.
Family is the most important thing to Stafford, not great heroes who commit brave deeds
on the battlefield. For him, his heroes are his father, who taught him how to be a man and to
embrace fear, and his son. His father taught him what it meant to be a hero through his example,
which William internalized for the rest of his life. He continued to return to these themes of
heroism and bravery, and these ideas can be traced back to Earl. Not only was his father a mentor
of listening and nature to William, he was also his example for being a good man. Earl instilled
in his son a sense of justice, bravery, and heroism, which William explores in his poetry
throughout his life. Through the examination of a handful of his poems, we can see just how
deeply his fathers influence permeated and in the different ways it manifested for William.

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Work Cited
Kitchen, Judith. Writing the World: Understanding William Stafford. Corvallis: Oregon State
University Press, 1999. Print.
Lensing, George S. and Ronald Moran. Four Poets and the Emotive Imagination: Robert Bly,
James Wright, Louis Simpson, and William Stafford. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 1976. Print.
Lieberman, Laurence. From The Expansional Poet: The Return to Personality. On William
Stafford: The Worth of Local Things. ed. Tom Andrews. Ann Arbor: The University of
Michigan Press, 1995. 20-22 Print.
Lofsness, Cynthia. Dreams to Have. Interview with William Stafford. Writing the Australian
Crawl: Views on the Writers Vocation. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press,
1978. Print.
---. From The Shock of Normalcy. On William Stafford: The Worth of Local Things. ed. Tom
Andrews. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1995. 31-40. Print.
Mills, Jr. Ralph J. Like Talk. On William Stafford: The Worth of Local Things. ed. Tom
Andrews. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1995. 44-46 Print.
Stafford, Kim. Early Morning: Remembering my Father, William Stafford. St. Paul: Graywolf
Press, 2002. Print.
Stafford, William. Another World Instead: The Early Poems of William Stafford 1937-1947. ed
Fred Marchant. Saint Paul: Graywolf Press, 2008. Print.
---. Introduction. Down in My Heart. By Kim Stafford. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press,
2006. viii-xvii. Print.
---. Traveling Through the Dark. New York: Harper and Row, 1962. Print.

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---. You Must Revise Your Life. Ann Arbor : The University of Michigan Press, 1986. Print.
Stitt, Peter. William Staffords Wilderness Quest. On William Stafford: The Worth of Local
Things. ed. Tom Andrews. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1995. 165-202
Print.