Sample Entry:
“East of Broken Top” by William Stafford
I chose this poem because, for one, William Stafford is one of my all-time favorite poets. His ability to state simple, universal truths astonishes me and always has. This poem, for example, is about human longing. I love how Stafford uses the earth’s rotation and gravitational pull here as ironic symbols of the power of our desires, even when we attempt to control them.
East of Broken Top
Sunset reaches out, earth rolls free
yet clings hard to what passes.
Light pours unstinting, though darkness
cuts the horizon and leaps for the sky.
Beyond, in a shadow vast as the world,
a silent upland springs blue where it stands
morning and evening. Its own being,
it never changes while the light plays over it.
We could go there and live, have a place,
a shoulder of earth, watch days
find their way onward in their serious march
where nothing happens but each one is gone.
Some people build cities and live there;
they hurry and shout. We lie on the earth;
to keep from falling into the stars we reach
as wide as we can and hold onto the grass.
Citation from EasyBib:
Stafford, William. "East of Broken Top." Even in Quiet Places: Poems. Lewiston, ID: Confluence, 1996. 47. Print.
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