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At least at night, a streetlight is better than a star. And better good shoes on a long walk than a good friend. Often in winter with my old cap I slip away into the gloom like a happy fish, at home with all I touch, at the level of love. No one can surface till far, far on, and all that we’ll have to love may be what’s near in the cold, even then.
It’s been a minute. I hope you’re doing well. You specifically and you collectively. The last couple of months feel like a fever dream. I would love to say that I’ve spent a good chunk of time buried in verse, but I would be lying. I’ve been burning the candle at both ends a bit and so lately I’ve longed more for a sensory deprivation tank than art. I was walking around the Bronx today and the weather was my kind of perfect. The sun was warm but the breeze was cold, and it made me feel all sorts of nostalgic and thoughtful. I felt the length of the years behind me, but in a good way. And somehow, that pushed me into the measured words of William Stafford this evening. I last featured a Stafford poem nearly two years ago, and probably haven’t picked up a book of his since, which is really just me failing my soul. If you are the type of person who occasionally finds themselves reading the bio section of folks over on Poetry Foundation, we are kin. If you read Stafford’s, you will find that the general consensus was that he was plainspoken and measured. You will find some hits of shared criticism that he was preachy. He was a lifelong pacifist and a conscientious objector during World War 2. When I read his work, I see a writer who fundamentally distrusts the center of things and opts instead to gently poke holes in the shit that everyone else gets so worked up about, and I think a good chunk of readers don't quite know what to do with a guy who genuinely doesn't care about dazzling them. But I value his restraint and his pragmatism dearly, and I find myself needing them tonight.
Stafford wastes no time in letting you know who he is, opening the piece with a pair of un-romantic equations. Notice the syntax here. It is conversational but clipped, intended to be taken as unquestionable fact. Or at the very least, if you question them it doesn’t matter because he’s already made up his mind. He breaks the lines of that first stanza at these structural joints (a subject from its verb and a preposition from its noun phrase) and creates a sort of grammatical stutter that transforms the statements into something that might be found inside particularly sagacious fortune cookies. The reveal being delayed across the white space of a line break has the added bonus of creating a sort of fog of war, requiring the reader to drop down to the next level in order to finish the thought.
There’s some good sonic play in that first stanza as well, starting with these rapid fire percussive t’s that are sort of sealed by the internal rhyme. “At least at night, a streetlight/ is better than a star.” It’s fast, rhythmic and feels sort of airtight as a logical argument. Then the sounds shift slightly and by the time he gets to the shoes and the walk, the mouthfeel changes to heavy monosyllables with zero phonetic flow. The tongue and jaw have to physically reset their positions for every one of those heavy stressed syllables. It doesn’t feel accidental to have that second splash of reality drag some. The truth is ugly and musicless, but it’s the truth and you have to respect it.
The second stanza sees the pragmatic speaker fully embracing his preference for isolation, and in that acceptance some of the music returns. The mouth is flooded with a wave of smooth l’s , soft nasals, and sibilants. Say that final line out loud. “at home/ with all I touch, at the level of love.” I have no doubts that your tongue enjoyed that rolling dance of l and v sounds. It is warm and fluid and it mimics the sensory relief of entering a sanctuary. But the acoustic ease is a structural trap. Look at the actual psychological landscape your brain is forced to process while your tongue is having such a pleasant time. Stafford is describing pulling a beat-up cap over his ears and submerging himself into the freezing winter dark for the express purpose of escaping human contact. He is "at home" and experiencing "love" not because he has bridged the gap with another human soul, but because he has successfully extracted himself from the game for a while. He has found his sensory deprivation tank somewhere in the cold, and with it he has found a sort of warmth.
The final stanza finds itself somewhere in the middle ground sonically. Stafford hits you with an immediate structural speed bump, dropping a comma and a line break right into a repetition. “till far,/ far on.” It’s clunky and it forces a heavy pump of the brakes to figure out exactly what he means. Then there’s the abundance of blunt monosyllables that just kind of sit there. “far on, and all that we’ll have/ to love may be what’s near/ in the cold.” There is flow, but it isn’t musical. And why should it be? This isn’t some idealistic bullshit. Stafford’s ultimate thesis here definitely isn’t romantic. Love isn’t some grand, fated soulmate connection waiting for you at the end of the road. It’s a side effect of proximity and timing. In the freezing dark of existence, you survive by learning to value whatever mundane thing happens to be standing close enough when you finally have time to come up for a breath. That might sound kind of shitty if what you’re angling for is some great deeper meaning, but that isn’t ever what Stafford is peddling. The cosmically awesome pales against the functionally superior.
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