Singer Come From Afar

Description

The five sections in Kim Stafford's Singer Come from Afar hold poems that summon war and peace, pandemic struggles, Earth imperatives, a seeker's spirit, and forge kinship. The former poet laureate of Oregon, Stafford has shared poems from this book in libraries, prisons, on reservations, with veterans, immigrants, homeless families, legislators, and students in schools. He writes for hidden heroes, resonant places, and for our chance to converge in spite of differences. Poems like "Practicing the Complex Yes" and "The Fact of Forgiveness" engineer tools for connection with the self, the community, and the Earth: "It is a given you have failed . . . [but] the world can't keep its treasures from you." For the early months of the pandemic, Stafford wrote and posted a poem for challenge and comfort each day on Instagram and published a series of chapbooks that traveled hand to hand to far places-to Norway, Egypt, and India. He views the writing and sharing of poetry as an essential act of testimony to sustain tikkun olam, the healing of the world. May this book be the hidden spring you seek.

Kim Stafford is a writer and teacher in Oregon, and the founding director of the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College. His poetry titles include A Gypsy's History of the World (Copper Canyon Press, 1976) and Wild Honey, Tough Salt (Red Hen Press, 2019). He has published a biography, Early Morning: Remembering My Father, William Stafford (Graywolf Press, 2002); a children's book, We Got Here Together (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1987); and a book about writing and teaching: The Muses Among Us: Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer's Craft (University of Georgia Press, 2003). His work has been translated into Japanese, French, and Spanish, and featured on The Writer's Almanac, and his books have received awards from the Pacific Northwest Booksellers and the Western States Book Awards. Stafford has received two NEA Creative Writing Fellowships in poetry, and has taught writing in Scotland, Italy, Mexico, and Bhutan. He co-founded the annual Fishtrap Writers Gathering in Oregon and teaches regularly at the Hugo House in Seattle. In 2018, he was named Oregon's Poet Laureate for a two-year term. He teaches and travels to raise the human spirit.

"I love this book. Kim Stafford writes from a deep well of gratitude and human goodness. Some of his poems are furious, some are sly and funny, some are simply beautiful, and all create a space for readers to catch their breath and reflect on the glories of this lovely, reeling planet and the sins against it. What greater gift could a poet give a worried, weary world?" -Kathleen Dean Moore, author of Earth's Wild Music "'Be home here in beauty and bounty,' writes Kim Stafford, in the poem 'Revising Genesis,' from his newest collection Singer Come from Afar: 'make Earth / your wise guide, each creature teaching miracles of being / in wing and song.' And this is a collection of bright wings and wild songs, of home and history and place and gentle invitation. Yet don't think this gentleness doesn't stand shoulder to shoulder with a fierce commitment to peace and justice with a deep and abiding moral vision. Truly, Kim Stafford is a singer, a seer, a prophet helping us write anew our stories of creation." -Joe Wilkins, author of Fall Back Down When I Die and When We Were Birds "Poetry began as song, and in the lyrics of Kim Stafford we still hear the singing. A keen listener to voices human and wild, he writes of prisoners and refugees, toads and wrens, warriors and peacemakers, orcas and rivers. His guiding impulse is compassion. He urges us to defy "the camp of anger" through acts of kindness. He assures us that Nature holds no grudges. Even "in the era of stormy weather," bees gather nectar, birds weave nests, seeds sprout, and new life emerges. Here is a bard of small creatures and gentle gestures who believes that art can help heal the wounds we've inflicted on Earth, our fellow species, and one another, and that conviction shines through every page of this big-hearted book." -Scott Russell Sanders, author of The Way of Imagination "Singer Come from Afar - his most recent poetry collection, comprised of five sections and a masterful afterword - serves as a lighted pathway for weary travelers. A panoramic and compassionate inquiry into what it means to be human this exact second, the book is an account of a writer's mighty vision and the execution of that vision, as offered by the poet himself." -Oregon ArtWatch