Notice What This Poem Is Not Doing [William Stafford]

William Stafford

The light along the hills in the morning
comes down slowly, naming the trees
white, then coasting the ground for stones to nominate.

Notice what this poem is not doing.

A house, a house, a barn, the old
quarry, where the river shrugs--
how much of this place is yours?

Notice what this poem is not doing.

Every person gone has taken a stone
to hold, and catch the sun. The carving
says, "Not here, but called away."

Notice what this poem is not doing.

The sun, the earth, the sky, all wait.
The crowns and redbirds talk. The light
along the hills has come, has found you.

Notice what this poem has not done.

Lit Instructor [William Stafford]

William Stafford

Day after day up there beating my wings
with all the softness truth requires
I feel them shrug whenever I pause:
they class my voice among tentative things,

And they credit fact, force, battering.
I dance my way toward the family of knowing,
embracing stray error as a long-lost boy
and bringing him home with my fluttering.

Every quick feather asserts a just claim;
it bites like a saw into white pine.
I communicate right; but explain to the dean--
well, Right has a long and intricate name.

And the saying of it is a lonely thing.

Just Thinking [William Stafford]

William Stafford

Got up on a cool morning. Leaned out a window.
No cloud, no wind. Air that flowers held
for awhile. Some dove somewhere.

Been on probation most of my life. And
the rest of my life been condemned. So these moments
count for a lot--peace, you know.

Let the bucket of memory down into the well,
bring it up. Cool, cool minutes. No one
stirring, no plans. Just being there.

This is what the whole thing is about.

Graydigger's Home [William Stafford]

William Stafford

Paw marks near one burrow show Graydigger
at home, I bend low, from down there swivel
my head, grasstop level--the world
goes on forever, the mountains a bigger
burrow, their snow like last winter. From a room
inside the world even the strongest wind
has a soft sound: a new house will hide
in the grass; footsteps are only the summer people.

The real estate agent is saying, "Utilities . . .
easy payments, a view." I see
my prints in the dirt. Out there
in the wind we talk about credit, security--
there on the bank by Graydigger's home.

For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid [William Stafford]

William Stafford

There is a country to cross you will
find in the corner of your eye, in
the quick slip of your foot--air far
down, a snap that might have caught.
And maybe for you, for me, a high, passing
voice that finds its way by being
afraid. That country is there, for us,
carried as it is crossed. What you fear
will not go away: it will take you into
yourself and bless you and keep you.
That's the world, and we all live there.

Atavism [William Stafford]

William Stafford

1
Sometimes in the open you look up
where birds go by, or just nothing,
and wait. A dim feeling comes
you were like this once, there was air,
and quiet; it was by a lake, or
maybe a river you were alert
as an otter and were suddenly born
like the evening star into wide
still worlds like this one you have found
again, for a moment, in the open.


2
Something is being told in the woods: aisles of
shadow lead away; a branch waves;
a pencil of sunlight slowly travels its
path. A withheld presence almost
speaks, but then retreats, rustles
a patch of brush. You can feel
the centuries ripple generations
of wandering, discovering, being lost
and found, eating, dying, being born.
A walk through the forest strokes your fur,
the fur you no longer have. And your gaze
down a forest aisle is a strange, long
plunge, dark eyes looking for home.
For delicious minutes you can feel your whiskers
wider than your mind, away out over everything.

Ask Me [William Stafford]

William Stafford

Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.

Allegiances [William Stafford]

William Stafford

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.

Far to the north, or indeed in any direction,
strange mountains and creatures have always lurked-
elves, goblins, trolls, and spiders:-we
encounter them in dread and wonder,

But once we have tasted far streams, touched the gold,
found some limit beyond the waterfall,
a season changes, and we come back, changed
but safe, quiet, grateful.

Suppose an insane wind holds all the hills
while strange beliefs whine at the traveler's ears,
we ordinary beings can cling to the earth and love
where we are, sturdy for common things.

Across Kansas [William Stafford]

William Stafford

My family slept those level miles
but like a bell rung deep till dawn
I drove down an aisle of sound,
nothing real but in the bell,
past the town where I was born.

Once you cross a land like that
you own your face more: what the light
struck told a self; every rock
denied all the rest of the world.
We stopped at Sharon Springs and ate--

My state still dark, my dream too long to tell.

A Ritual To Read To Each Other [William Stafford]

William Stafford

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider--
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give--yes or no, or maybe--
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

Biography of William Stafford (1914 - 1993 / Kansas / United States)

Short Story Of William Stafford: William Edgar Stafford was born in Hutchinson, Kansas, on January 17, 1914, to Ruby Mayher and Earl Ingersoll Stafford. The eldest of three children, Stafford grew up with an appreciation for nature and books.

During the Depression the family moved from town to town as Earl Stafford searched for jobs. William helped to support the family also, by delivering papers, working in the sugar beet fields, raising vegetables, and as an electrician's mate. In 1933 Stafford graduated from high school in Liberal, Kansas, and attended Garden City and El Dorado junior colleges, graduating from the University of Kansas in 1937. In 1939 Stafford enrolled at the University of Wisconsin to begin graduate studies in Economics, but by the next year he had returned to Kansas to earn his master's degree in English.

When the United States entered World War II in 1941 Stafford was drafted before he could obtain his degree. As a registered pacifist, Stafford worked in camps and projects for conscientious objectors in Arkansas, California, and Illinois. He spent 1942 to 1946 in these work camps and was paid $2.50 per month for assigned duties such as fire fighting, soil conservation, and building and maintaining roads and trails. In 1944 while in California Stafford met and married Dorothy Frantz, the daughter of a minister of the Church of the Brethren.

Following the war Stafford taught one year at a high school, spent a year working for relief organization Church World Service, and finished his master's degree at the University of Kansas in 1947. His master's thesis, memoirs of his time spent as a conscientious objector, was published as a book of prose, Down in My Heart (Brethren Publishing House, 1947).

In 1948 Stafford moved to Oregon to teach at Lewis and Clark College. Though he traveled and read his work widely, he taught at Lewis and Clark until his retirement in 1980. His first major collection of poems, Traveling Through the Dark, was published when Stafford was forty-eight. It won the National Book Award in 1963. He went on to publish more than sixty-five volumes of poetry and prose. Among his many honors and awards were a Shelley Memorial Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Western States Lifetime Achievement Award in Poetry. In 1970, he was the Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (a position currently known as the Poet Laureate).

Although his father appears more often in his poetry, Stafford has stated that his mother's presence and behavior influenced his writing. His poetry was strongly influenced by both the people and the plains region of his youth and young adulthood.

Stafford's poems are often deceptively simple. Like Robert Frost's, however, they reveal a distinctive and complex vision upon closer examination. Among his best-known books are The Rescued Year (1966), Stories That Could Be True: New and Collected Poems (1977), Writing the Australian Crawl: Views on the Writer's Vocation (1978), and An Oregon Message (1987).

William Stafford died at his home in Lake Oswego, Oregon, on August 28, 1993.

11 October Memoriam

Jean Cocteau (French Poet,Film Director) 1889-1963







Red Foxx (comedian Actor) 1922-1991











Dorothea Lange (Documentary Photographer) 1895-1965







Edith Piaf (Singer) 1915-1963

Edith Piaf Biography (Singer) 1915–1963

Edith Giovanna Gassion Is Full Name (born Dec. 19, 1915, Paris, Fr.—died Oct. 11, 1963, Paris) French singer and actress whose interpretation of the chanson, or French ballad, made her internationally famous. Among her most famous songs was “Non, je ne regrette rien” (“No, I don't regret anything”).

Piaf's singing reflected the tragedies of her own life. Her mother, a café singer, abandoned her at birth, and she was reared by her grandmother. She became blind at the age of three as a complication of meningitis but recovered her sight four years later. Her father, a circus acrobat, took her along on tours and first encouraged her to sing. She sang in the streets of Paris until discovered by a cabaret owner who gave her her first nightclub job and suggested that she change her name to Piaf, Parisian slang for “sparrow,” in apparent reference to her diminutive size (under five feet tall and about 90 pounds in weight). Her debut was acclaimed by Maurice Chevalier, who happened to be in the audience.

In 1935 Piaf made her theatrical debut, and within a few years she was singing in the large music halls of Paris. During World War II she would only entertain French prisoners of war and aided several in their escapes. The subsequent years were spent in tours of Europe, South America, and the United States. Her simple yet dramatic style and throaty, tender voice with its tragic overtones brought her wide acclaim and never ceased to move her audiences. Despite her success, however, her life continued to be marred by illness, accidents, and personal unhappiness.

Related Works
Singles
Le Vie en Rose
What Can I Do?
Mais Qu'est-ce que J'ai
I'll Remember Today
If You Love Me, Really Love Me
The Three Bells
1960 Milord
Compilations
1983 The Complete Piaf

Dorothea Lange Biography (documentary photographer) 1895 - 1965

Dorothea Nutzhorn Is Real Name (born May 26, 1895, Hoboken, New Jersey, U.S.—died October 11, 1965, San Francisco, California) American documentary photographer whose portraits of displaced farmers during the Great Depression greatly influenced later documentary and journalistic photography.

Lange studied photography at Columbia University in New York City under Clarence H. White, a member of the Photo-Secession group. In 1918 she decided to travel around the world, earning money as she went by selling her photographs. Her money ran out by the time she got to San Francisco, so she settled there and obtained a job in a photography studio.During the Great Depression, Lange began to photograph the unemployed men who wandered the streets of San Francisco. Pictures such as White Angel Breadline (1932), showing the desperate condition of these men, were publicly exhibited and received immediate recognition both from the public and from other photographers, especially members of of Group f.64. These photographs also led to a commission in 1935 from the federal Resettlement Administration (later called the Farm Security Administration [FSA]). The latter agency, established by the U.S. Agriculture Department, hoped that Lange's powerful images would bring the conditions of the rural poor to the public's attention. Her photographs of migrant workers, with whom she lived for some time, were often presented with captions featuring the words of the workers themselves. FSA director Roy Styker considered her most famous portrait, Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California (1936), to be the iconic representation of the agency's agenda. The work now hangs in the Library of Congress.Lange's first exhibition was held in 1934, and thereafter her reputation as a skilled documentary photographer was firmly established. In 1939 she published a collection of her photographs in the book An American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion. Two years later she received a Guggenheim Fellowship, and in 1942 she recorded the mass evacuation of Japanese-Americans to detention camps after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. After World War II she created a number of photo-essays, including Mormon Villages and The Irish Countryman, for Life magazine. The year after her death in 1965, she was honoured with a retrospective show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Redd Foxx Biography (Comedian Actor) 1922 - 1991

John Elroy Sanford Is Full Name (born December 9, 1922, St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.—died October 11, 1991, Los Angeles, California) American comedian and television actor known for his raunchy stand-up routines. His style of comedy, often described as “blue” for its foul language and highly adult subject matter, influenced generations of comics. He was also the star of the hit television series Sanford and Son, which ran on NBC from 1972 to 1977.

While a struggling performer in New York City, Sanford adopted the name Redd Foxx. He performed comedy on the “chitlin circuit” of African American nightclubs during the 1940s and '50s. By the 1960s, recordings of his comedy acts had become enormously popular among African Americans, though his albums were considered too racy for white audiences and were rarely available in stores with predominantly white customers.In 1970 he gave a memorable comic performance in the hit film Cotton Comes to Harlem, and soon afterward he was approached by television producer Norman Lear about starring in the American version of the popular British sitcom Steptoe and Son. In Sanford and Son, Foxx played Fred Sanford (the name was taken from his brother), a junk dealer and widower living with his son in the Watts neighbourhood of Los Angeles. The show was a major success, but a dispute between Foxx and the producers over the direction of the show led to his departure in 1977. The Redd Foxx Comedy Hour (1977–78) and The Redd Foxx Show (1986) followed, but both shows were short-lived.Foxx occasionally made films, including Harlem Nights (1989) with Eddie Murphy, but worked primarily as a Las Vegas headliner. He was shooting a new sitcom named The Royal Family when he died in 1991.

Jean Cocteau Biography (French poet, playwright, and film director) 1889 - 1963

Jean Cocteau Biography:(born July 5, 1889, Maisons-Laffitte, near Paris, France—died Oct. 11, 1963, Milly-la-Forêt, near Paris) French poet, playwright, and film director. He published his first collection of poems, La Lampe d'Aladin, at age 19. He converted to Catholicism early but soon renounced religion. During World War I he was an ambulance driver on the Belgian front, the setting for the novel Thomas l'imposteur (1923). In the years when he was addicted to opium, he produced some of his most important works, including the play Orphée (1926) and the novel Les Enfants terribles (1929). His greatest play is thought to be The Infernal Machine (1934). His first film was The Blood of a Poet (1930); he returned to filmmaking in the 1940s, first as a screenwriter and then as a director, and made such admired films as Beauty and the Beast (1945), Orphée (1949), and Le Testament d'Orphée (1960). Musically, Cocteau was closely associated with the group of composers known as Les Six; among other collaborations, he provided ballet scenarios for Erik Satie (Parade, 1917) and Darius Milhaud (Le Boeuf sur le toit, 1920) and wrote librettos for Igor Stravinsky (Oedipus, 1927) and Milhaud (La Voix humaine, 1930). Also an artist, he illustrated numerous books with his vivid drawings, and he worked as a designer as well.

10 October Memoriam

Orson Welles Biography (American motion-picture actor, director, producer, and writer) 1915–1985

George Orson Welles American motion-picture actor, director, producer, and writer:(born May 6, 1915, Kenosha, Wisconsin, U.S.—died October 10, 1985, Los Angeles) American motion-picture actor, director, producer, and writer. His innovative narrative techniques and use of photography, dramatic lighting, and music to further the dramatic line and to create mood combined to make his Citizen Kane (1941)—which he wrote, directed, produced, and acted in—one of the most influential films in the history of the art.

From his progressive mother (a pianist and crack shot with a rifle), Welles learned to play the piano and the violin. His parents separated when he was six years old, and his mother died when he was eight. Through his father, a successful inventor and manufacturer, who died when his son was 13, Welles met actors and sportsmen. By the time he was 11, Welles had traveled around the world twice. He attended the Todd School for Boys in Woodstock, Illinois, where he was an indifferent student but learned much about dramatics. He studied briefly at the Art Institute of Chicago and worked as a reporter before going to Ireland, where he made a sketching tour by donkey cart. His stage debut was made at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, in the autumn of 1931, where he acted in Hamlet. Welles remained in Ireland for a year, acting with the Abbey Players as well as at the Gate. After a tour of Spain and Morocco, he returned to Chicago and then toured with Katharine Cornell's company in 1933–34, playing Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, Marchbanks in Candida, and Octavius Barrett in The Barretts of Wimpole Street. In 1934 he organized a drama festival at Woodstock, where he played Hamlet. He made his New York debut as Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet in December 1934. Welles was the director of an all-black cast in Macbeth for the Negro People's Theatre, a part of the Federal Theatre Project, in 1936. In 1937 he formed the Mercury Theatre, which presented a renowned modern-dress version of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.

His radio career began early in 1934 in an adaptation of the poet Archibald MacLeish's verse play Panic. In 1934–35 he narrated The March of Time news series, and subsequent radio roles included the part of Lamont Cranston in the mystery series The Shadow. In 1938 the Mercury players undertook a series of radio dramas adapted from famous novels. They attained national notoriety with the program based on H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds; the performance on October 30, 1938, using the format of a simulated news broadcast, announced an attack on New Jersey by invaders from Mars. Thousands of listeners, not realizing the announcement was a simulation, were panic-stricken.

Christopher Reeve Biography (Actor, Superman 1978) 1952–2004

Christopher Reeve Superman 1978:Film and stage actor, director, born on September 25, 1952 in New York City, USA. He studied at Cornell University and the Juilliard School in New York, and had various stage and television roles before becoming universally known as the star of Superman and its sequels (1978, 1980, 1983, 1987). Later films include Noises Off (1992) and Morning Glory (1994).

In May 1995 Reeve became paralysed from the neck downwards and wheel-chair bound following a horse-riding accident. He also required a respirator to assist his breathing for the rest of his life. He became very involved in campaigns supporting handicapped children and paraplegics, and founded the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation in 1998 to promote research into spinal cord injuries, testifying before a Senate subcommittee in favor of federal funding for stem cell research.

Reeve continued to work after ongoing rehabilitation. He acted again in films, including a television production of Rear Window (1998) and directed two television films with health themes, In the Gloaming (1997) and The Brooke Ellison Story (2004). His autobiography Still Me appeared in 1998.

Christopher Reeve died from cardiac arrest on October 10, 2004. He was survived by his wife Dana and son William, as well as his two children, Matthew and Alexandra from his previous relationship. Sadly, his wife Dana was diagnosed with cancer in 2005 and died in March 2006 at the age of 44.

Yul Brynner Biography (Actor) 1920–1985

Taidje Khan Short Story:

Actor. Born Taidje Khan in Sakhalin Island, Russian S.F.S.R.After a brief career as a circus acrobat in France, Brynner started actingwith a touring company in the early 1940s. He made his Broadway debut inLute Sang in 1946. He began playing his most famous role, the king of Siamin The King and I in the Broadway production of the Oscar and Hammersteinmusical in 1951. After more than three years and 1,246 performances, hestarred in the screen version in 1956, winning an Oscar for Best Actor. Hethen returned to the stage for an additional 3,379 stage performances, thelast being in 1985. Along the way, Brynner also starred in The TenCommandments (1956), Anastasia (1956), The Brothers Karamazov (1958), and TheMagnificent Seven (1960).