William Stafford: Poems Literary Elements

In the poem Stories to Live in the World With, William Stafford switches between the first person voice narrating their own experiences and the third person narrative, still relayed by the first person speaker, who only pops back into the story at the end of the mini narrative. He then finishes this poem with part three, written in the first person narrative again.

Stories to Live in the World With is written in three parts: the first presents the thoughts of the speaker, the second their recantation of a story their mother told the and the third a scene in which the speaker unburdens themselves.

In Stories to Live in the World With, the 'big stick,' that the protagonist throws 'far out, to be all the burdens from earlier years,' practically takes on its metaphorical role, since the speaker is free from these burdens afterwards, noting 'ever since, I have been walking lightly, looking around, out of the woods.

The sibilance in 'the sharp swallows in their swerve,' contrasting with the cutting alliteration of 'hunting for the final curve / coming closer and closer,' recreates the experience of observing a swallow from a distance and then suddenly having it appear a lot closer to you or approach you suddenly.

The irony of 'one tree head must resemble another head,' in Point of View relates the content of the poem to the title, as the owls see a tree and will gravitate towards it, whether it is in the 'wonderful wilderness,' or 'one thin gulley of southern trees,' near an 'apartment house.'

Point of View is a nature poem.

Point of View is set in nature, with a 'new loud apartment house,' being built near 'one thin gulley of southern trees stands on,' apart from 'the wonderful wilderness.' It also takes place at night, when the owls are active.

The tone in 'After Arguing against the Contention That Art Must Come from Discontent is triumphal, seen in the exclamation '"Made it again!"' and 'Oh how I love this climb!'

In the poem 'After Arguing against the Contention That Art Must Come from Discontent,' the speaker and poet, William Stafford is the protagonist.

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In Stories to Live in the World With, the climax comes within the narrative at the centre of the frame narrative in section two. The man who stole a knife is told plainly 'you are dead.' This is a sudden twist in the narrative which surprises the reader and then is resolved when they realize that a child is telling this story after their mother told them. t ends up being a moral tale: 'My mother told us about it. She told us never to kill or rob.'

In the poem Oak, 'the long winds coming home,' foreshadow 'the storm,' both for the reader and the speaker in the poem.

The final stanza of Brother, written as three short, simple consecutive sentences is a simple understatement of a brother's love and the impact of loss: 'But Bob was. He lived. I had a brother.' The simplicity emphasizes the past tense of the verbs 'was,' 'lived,' and 'had.'

In Accountability, William Stafford refers to Thomas Aquinas, Saint Theresa and Alfred North Whitehead.

In By the Escalator 'all women,' represent a 'wife,' and 'all men,' represent a 'father or son,' which highlights the anonymity of an individual to strangers and gives context to Stafford's conclusion of a relationship between two people: 'steadfastly worthless, except to each other.'

In the poem, Bi-focal, William Stafford uses personification to describe the position of love on 'the surface' as 'a map of roads,' that leads 'wherever go miles or little bushes nod.' The pleasant personification of the 'little bushes,' creates an image of them directing and guiding someone along a path of love.

When Stafford refers to the owls call, stating 'there thunders the owl his eight loud hoots in the night,' it is an exaggerated description of the owl's tone, but is deliberately used to emphasize the stillness of the night and the owl's interruption piercing through that stillness.

The repetition in 'wingbeat to wingbeat,' and the syllabic structure of the phrase creates the sound of the swallow beating its wings and creates the image of the bird for the reader.