> 'A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as he is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things he would not have thought of if he had not started to say them.'"...
I think Tolstoy was a first-thing-in-the-morning writer too!!
"something is offering you a guidance available only to those undistracted by anything else."

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/william-e-stafford
#WilliamStafford #StaffordOnWriting #EarlyMorningWritiers #OnWriting

Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.

#WilliamStafford (1998) #poetry #poem

William Stafford's "Good Room" spoke to me this morning about my weekend spent in the kitchen canning the bounty of the harvest.

"Room that gives life, alone with independent
spices content just to be in their jars:
while we live may your way be ours."

https://www.ayearofbeinghere.com/2015/09/william-stafford-good-room.html

#poetry #poem #TodaysPoem #PoemADay #PoetryOfPresence #WilliamStafford #kitchen #cooking #food #spices

Excerpt from "A Ritual to Read to Each Other" by William Stafford

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider—
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58264/a-ritual-to-read-to-each-other

#poem #poetry #TodaysPoem #PoemADay #WilliamStafford

Most mornings I get away, slip out
the door before light, set forth on the dim, gray
road, letting my feet find a cadence
that softly carries me on. Nobody
is up--all alone my journey begins.

#WilliamStafford (2002) #poetry #poem

People who might judge are mostly asleep; they can’t
monitor you all the time, and sometimes they forget.
When dawn flows over the hedge you can
get up and act busy.

#WilliamStafford (1993) #poetry #poem

"This is the field where the battle did not happen,
where the unknown soldier did not die.
This is the field where grass joined hands,
where no monument stands,
and the only heroic thing is the sky."

#WilliamStafford (1998) #poetry #poem