This was one of my daughter Hetty’s favorite books. It was required reading for a class she had in college. I got curious and decided to see what it was about, now I love it too. Here are just a few gems–

Writing the Australian Crawl

William Stafford

p. 17
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. The is, he does not draw on a reservoir; instead, he engages in a an activity that brings to him a whole succession of unforeseen stories , poems, essays, plays, laws, philosophies, religions…

p. 29
thoughts, statements, implications, are much more varied, unaccountable, and free flowing than most intentional people would lead us to assume. the appearance, or the sound, or the whole feel, of the world can be changed at will. Set free, the mind discovers short cuts and arabesques through and over and around all purposes.

p. 30
One day Sun found a new canyon.
It hid for miles and ran far away,
then it went under a mountain. Now Sun
goes over but knows it is there. And that
is why Sun shines–it is always looking.
Be like the sun.

Your breath has a little shape–
you can see it cold days. Well,
every day it is like that, even in summer.
Well, your breath goes, a whole
army of little shapes. They are living
in the woods now and are your friends.
When you die–well, you go with
your last breath and find the others.

Sometimes if a man is evil his breath
runs away and hides from him. When he
dies his last breath cannot find the other,
and he never comes together again–
those little breaths, you know, in the autumn
they scurry the bushes before the snow.
They never come back.

[This whole chapter is good. It’s called “Capturing People of the South Wind.”]

p. 35
My mother would say abrupt things, reckless things, liberating things. I remember her saying of some people in town, “They are so boring you get tired of them, even when they are not around.”

p. 43
“At the Playground”
Away down deep and away up high
a swing drops you into the sky.
Forth it swings you in a sweep
all the way to the stars and back–
Goodby, Jill, goodby, Jack.
Shuddering climb wild and steep
away up high, away down deep.

p. 51
The action of writing, for instance, is the successive discovery of cumulative epiphanies in the self’s encounter with the world

Art has its sacramental aspect. The source of art’s power is one with religion’s: the discovery of the essential self and the cultivation of it through the act of its positive impulses.

This turning to the inward self is especially important in our time, when literature is merchandised. Time, Newsweek, talk shows, and many such “guides” to our opinions, give us a package. They identify literature in the careless, brush-by way we all accept when we accept the intentional, commercial pattern for everyday life. We do not perceive that our language and our purpose-oriented habits are making us violate again and again the distinction that this inner, art, activity has. The “important” institutions of our time judge literature by the prevalent clichés of our time; but literature springs us out of time.