Cold - “Remembering Mountain Men”
Stafford acknowledges, “I put my foot in cold water/and hold it there: early mornings/they had to wade through broken ice/to find the traps in the deep channel/with their hands, drag up the chains and/the drowned beaver.” The Mountain Men had to withstand the inauspicious conditions that the cold water incarnates for them to endure. Stafford places his feet in cold water to get a hint of what the Mountain Men encountered. The coldness of water galvanizes Stafford’s empathy.
Grim glasses - “American Gothic”
Stafford concedes, “If we see better through tiny,/grim glasses, we like to wear/tiny, grim glasses./ The ‘grim glasses’ are emblematic of Americans’ dreadful standpoints. Viewing the world through the inept perspectives occasions Gothic ramifications.
Renaissance - “American Gothic”
Stafford recognizes, “We travel our kind of/Renaissance: barnfuls of hay,/whole voyages of corn, and/a book that flickers its/halo in the parlor.” America’s rebirth is typified by the agrarianism that the corn and hay signify. The book supplements the intellectualism that is dominant in America’s renaissance.
Bi-Focal - “Bi-focal”
Bifocal is a motif for a dual binary. Stafford explicates, “So, the world happens twice—/once what we see it as;/second it legends itself/deep, the way it is.” Based on these lines the two types of world include the superficial and the inner worlds. Accordingly, the world is integrally twofold.
