Traveling through the Dark Analysis

While this one falls under the heading of free verse there are some structural and metrical elements that make the poem feel very ordered.One of the first things that jumps out about this poem is t...

The speaker of this poem seems like the kind of guy you'd want to have on your team if you were a Survivor contestant. He seems to know stuff: "It is usually best to roll them into the canyon" (3);...

Setting is crucial in this one. All the setting elements (nighttime, the wilderness, the mountain road, the car) are necessary for this poem to work. Just try to imagine the poem without one of the...

Have you ever noticed how some people are just better at telling stories or jokes? (Speaking of jokes, have you heard the one about the lit. major and the talking horse? No? Well, remind us; we'll...

Stafford gives us a pretty clear title here, and the fact that this title is repeated as the first half of the poem's first line tells us that he wants us to pay particular attention.The title sets...

William Stafford poems generally tell it like it is. He tends to let images, actions, and narratives do a great deal of the work in his poems and setting often plays a big role. More often than not...

Stafford isn't trying to sneak anything past you with this one. The car is a car, the road is a road, the deer is a deer. But don't ignore the scenery just because this is base camp. If take a good...

Stafford was no lazy poet. In his writing life, he wrote drafts of around 20,000 poems. Around 6000 poems were ultimately published. Stafford's son, Kim, is also a writer and poet. (Source.)William...

There's nothing sexy about this one. But we're going to slap it with a PG for the car-on-deer violence.