Kim Robert Stafford

The first two sections of the book are made up of political verse and stuff about Covid, and I found them to be as disposable as the 6PM news--I expect they served a purpose for him and for his readers, but I'll never read them again. The last three sections are some stunning beautiful poems, and to me worth the price of the book. He doesn't seem to have a lot of books out there, but I've ordered his A Thousand Friends of Rain: New and Selected Poems 1976-1998, based on the quality of the last part of this book. I should say here that some readers may find the first two sections of this book very much to their liking, and my dislike of them isn't based on the politics, which I mostly agree with.… (meer)

Kim Stafford is a second generation poet and essayist. He is the son of William Stafford, Oregon Poet Laureate and pacifist. William Stafford was a conscientious objector during WWII. He and his wife raised their four children in a loving, bookish principled home, mostly in Lake Oswego Oregon. The two boys, Kim and Bret, were close in age, almost twins. In this book, Kim Stafford attempts to come to terms with Bret’s suicide in 1988 at age 40.

Told in a series of 100 vignettes; this book is beautifully written. There is a wonderful sense of place. The Staffords loved the outdoors, and I loved reading a book set in my own, wonderfully lush, Pacific Northwest. “I have realized only recently that in my childhood we were poor. Maybe we felt rich because we lived with bountiful stories, ideas, places. Abundance was everywhere—the sky, rivers with their infinitely changing ways, mornings in summer that lasted longer than a life.”

The book is sad. Stafford searches through his memories of his childhood and his brother, looking for the reasons behind his brother’s depression and suicide. Bret was the good brother, Kim more the troublemaker. Kim wonders if this is what doomed Bret. Kim’s survivor’s guilt is palpable.

At times I wanted to shake Kim and tell him, maybe it isn’t about anything you or your family did or didn’t do. Maybe it was just lousy brain chemistry. Kim knows this at one level, but at another level can’t keep himself from looking for answers to the unanswerable.… (meer)