Way It Is

In a career that began at 46, Stafford (1914-1993) published 67 full-length collections and chapbooks of sharply observed verse, harvesting poems from his diligently carried out ""Daily Writings."" Rather than completely refining out the rougher work, this second attempt at selecting from Stafford's vast oeuvre quadruples the poem count of its predecessor, following the arc of a journeyman's career with its attendant excesses, successes and failures. Stafford, who after some itinerant years settled into a 30 year stay at Oregon's Lewis & Clark college and a stint as the state's poet laureate, rendered the objects that came his way in ordinary language. Most striking, in hindsight, is the easy range of his intentionally limited set of linguistic pipes: from simmering violence and its attendant atmospherics (""Travelling Through the Dark""; ""Not in the Headlines"") to religious naturalism (""I crossed the Sierras in my old Dodge/ letting the speedometer measure God's kindness,/ and slept in the wilderness on the hard ground."") to elegy (""At the Grave of My Brother"") and social history and commentary (""Is This Feeling about the West Real?""; ""Our City is Guarded by Automatic Rockets""). Other poems offer delicate philosophical introspection, as in the familiar ""Bi-focal"": ""So, the world happens twice--/ once what we see it as;/ second it legends itself/ deep, the way it is."" Including 71 previously unpublished new poems, among them the poem Stafford wrote the day he died, this collection fully reacquaints us with a quiet, generous presence on the American poetic landscape. (Apr.) FYI: Down in My Heart, Stafford's WWII conscientious objector's diary, is due from Oregon State in April ($14.95 paper 120p ISBN 0-87071-430-9). The Univ. of Mich. recently publishe the essay collection Crossing Unmarked Snow: Further Views on the Winter's Vocation ($13.95 paper ISBN 0-472-06664-1; $39.50 Cloth -09664-8).