William Stafford and Jay-Writing

The joke is that my name is Jay, so "Jay-writing" is analagous to jay-walking--crossing the street where you aren't supposed to.

William Stafford is the guy that took up writing poetry in his forties. He was already a writer and a teacher of writing at the University of Oregon. I must have mentioned him before. He got up at five every morning and worked on his poetry. Usually, by the time he sat down to breakfast he had at least one poem ready to send off to the little magazines. He stuck to this routine to the morning of his death in 1993. A heart attack took him quickly when he was seventy-nine.

He was a conscientious objector during World War II. You don’t hear much about conscientious objectors during that war. In the States there were only 75,000 who chose jail or alternative service rather than accept the draft. That’s compared to 16,400,000 who donned the uniform. Bill planted trees in the mountains and did other work in camps from 1941 to 1946.

In a poem called “Freedom,” he showed his rationale--

Freedom is not following a river.
Freedom is following a river,
though, if you want to.
.....
If you are oppressed, wake up about
four in the morning: most places,
you can usually be free some of the time
if you wake up before other people.

He must have felt the huge minority of people who suffer from insomnia (somebody has estimated it at 30% of the population) are actually early morning poets who haven’t realized their vocation yet! He was certainly evangelical about writing.

I have known the “Freedom” poem a long time, but here’s a stanza in another poem I just came across this evening.

News Every Day

Birds don’t say it just once. If they like it
they say it again. And again, every morning.
I heard a bird congratulating itself
all day for being a jay.
Nobody cared. But it was glad
all over again, and said so, again.

I think he is the jay here, singing his song every morning, an affirmation of his nature, whether people cared or not, paid for it or not.

That gives me a lift. My depression apprently feels no compunction about singing its dismal song over and over, whether people care or not, pay for it or not.

Hmm.

One of my common pen names is “Jay.” Now I shall tell people I have named myself for the bird, and thank you, William Stafford, for the conceit. Now I know what I’m doing, writing so much of the day. I’m congratulating myself for being a jay, unlawfully pleased with being me!