William Stafford Sound of the Ax collection, 1979-2014

William Stafford was born in 1914 in Hutchinson, Kansas, and worked during the Depression years at a variety of jobs (in sugar beet fields, in construction, and in an oil refinery). He received his bachelor's degree shortly before the war from the University of Kansas, and returned there to complete his master's in 1947. A committed pacifist, he was interned between 1942 and 1946 interned in Civilian Public Service camps in California and Arkansas. After the war he was employed at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon till his retirement. He spent 1950 to 1952 at the University of Iowa, where he received his doctorate in 1954. He is the author of almost seventy volumes, including the poetry collections Traveling through the Dark, winner of the National Book Award in 1963, and the two volumes of selected poems Stories that Could Be True (Harper & Row, 1977) and The Way It Is (Graywolf Press, 1993). He is also the author of four books of prose essays in the Michigan University Press Poets on Poetry series and of the prose memoir Down in My Heart (1947), the account of his experiences in CPS camp. Between 1970 and 1971 he was Poetry Consultant at the Library of Congress, and was appointed poet laureate of Oregon in 1975. He died in August 1993.

Vincent Wixon is a poet, scholar, and the author of three books of poetry: Blue Moon, The Square Grove,and Seed, and co-edited two books on writing by William Stafford for the University of Michigan Press. He has co-produced documentary films on Lawson Inada and William Stafford, housed in the Traveling Through The Dark collection at Lewis & Clark College Special Collections and Archives. He and his wife, Patty Wixon, have lived in Southern Oregon since 1978 and have been deeply involved with the poetry community throughout the state, serving as longtime poetry editors for Jefferson Monthly, the public radio program guide for Southern Oregon and Northern California, acting as poetry judges for Oregon Poetry Association state contests and Poetry Out Loud in Rogue Valley schools, and holding positions on the board of Chautauqua Poets & Writers.