Here it is, the last of what’s been a beautiful summer so far. If you ignore the wars, the killing. In a way, that’s what this poem is about. I think it’s a perfect poem. Look at the way it takes this one moment and lives inside it. It can’t last, of course. But here it is. You’re lying on the couch just enjoying being alive.
What I do is lie on a beach chair by the water and take this time as if there were nothing wrong anywhere. It’s crucial time. It allows me to face the worst of things later.
I notice that Stafford imagines these times as hidden. If we were perfect citizens, we’d be worrying and being busy. We’d be shaking our heads and frowning. But we save these times when we do none of those things. “Pieces of Heaven,” he calls them.
Stafford was born in Kansas to a highly literate family. During the depression, they had to move from town to town to find work for his father. Stafford delivered newspapers, worked in sugar beet fields, raised vegetables, and worked as an electrician’s apprentice to help support the family’s income.
His first collection of poems, when he was 48 (!), won the National Book Award, and he was later appointed to what is now called the U. S. Poet Laureate. He kept a daily journal for 50 years, and composed nearly 22,000 poems, of which roughly 3,000 were published.
That’s an inspiration to me and must be to many other poets. To keep on and keep on, day after day, putting words on paper. The poems don’t have to be perfect. Or even good, as long as they keep coming. Some of them will be good. That’s enough.