Wild Honey, Tough Salt

by Kim Stafford

Overview

Wild Honey, Tough Salt offers a prismatic view of Earth citizenship, where we must now be ambidextrous. The book takes a stern look inward calling for sturdy character and supple spirit, and a bold look outward seeking ways to engage grief trouble. The book begins with poems that witness a buoyant life in a difficult world: wandering New Orleans in a trance, savoring the life of artist Tove Jansson, reading the fine print on the Mexican peso and the Scottish five-pound note. Clues to untapped energy lie everywhere by the lens of poetry. The book then moves to considerations of the worst in us—torture and war: how to recruit a child soldier? How to be married to the heartless guard? What to say to your child who is enamored by bullets? In the third section, the book offers a spangle of poems blessing earth: wren song, bud growth, river’s eager way with obstacles. And the final section offers poems of affection: infant clarities of home, long marriage in dog years, a consoling campfire in the yard when all seems lost. The book will soften your trouble, and give you spirit for the days ahead.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781597098960
Publisher:	Red Hen Press
Publication date:	04/23/2019
Pages:	100
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Kim Stafford directs the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College. He is the author of a dozen books of poetry and prose, including The Muses Among Us and Early Morning: Remembering My Father, William Stafford. His most recent books are 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do: How My Brother Disappeared, and Wind on the Waves: Stories from the Oregon Coast. His poems have appeared in The Atlantic, Harpers, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Sun, and other magazines. He has taught writing in dozens of schools and community centers, and in Scotland, Italy, and Bhutan. He currently serves as Oregon’s poet laureate.

Read an Excerpt

Beside the Road
While Our Nation Is at War

In our son’s young hand,

borrowed from the ground in California,

five acorns glisten and roll.

“Dad! These could be bullets!

Will you help me make a gun?”

His eyes look up into mine.

“Or dad! They could be magic

seeds! Will you help me

make a bag with a hole—

so they drop along the path

and grow?” I take his hand in mine.

“Little friend, we must decide.”

Table of Contents

1 Economy of Miracles

How to Sleep Cold in North County 13

The Secret 14

Benign Indignities 15

My Iron Catastrophe 16

Love Money 17

Tove Jansson's Island 18

What Civilization Costs 20

Willa Gather's Ride 21

Prairie Prescription 22

Nado: the Good Guardian at Ogyen Choling in Bhutan 23

Notes from the Storm at Billy Meadow 24

Once in the Back Country 25

Weaving Kin 26

Mediation 28

My Critics Have Erred 29

Wild Honey, Tough Salt 30

It Seemed Like an Ordinary Day until I Had Coffee with Jesus at the Café du Monde 31

The Right to Be Forgotten 34

Great Old Man 35

2 The Torturer's Wife

Allegiance 39

Peace Warrior 40

The Torturer's Wife 41

Champion the Enemy's Need 42

How They Recruit Child Soldiers 43

Citizen of Dark Times 44

Who Knows about War? 45

Benazir 46

Torture Test 48

Suicide Bomber, Algiers 49

Pictish Stones 50

A Prayer by the Tigris 51

Green Zone, Green Earth 52

Elementary Lesson 54

Mrs. Smith 1959 55

Night Flower Market Along the Water 56

Escalation of the Possible 58

We Ask the Iraqi Artists

What It Is Like to Be Creators

Where Civilization Began 59

Nadezhda 60

Proclamation for Peace 61

Beside the Road While Our Nation Is at War 62

At the Indian Cemetery on the Oregon Coast 63

3 Lost Leaves of Earth

A Few Treasured Steps at Glensallagh 67

Abe & I 68

In My Name 70

Earth Verse 72

A Buddhist in Cattle Country 73

Walking in an Old Forest with Our Young Son on My Back, I See the Fates of My Friends in Every Tree 74

Calligraphy of Sticks 75

At the Meriwether Lewis Grave on the Natchez Trace in Tennessee 76

Listening in the Mountains North from Santa Cruz 78

The Bardo at a Crack in the World 79

Roe Deer 80

Crow & Thistle 81

Palouse 82

Trail Register at Cascade Head 83

Last Wish 84

Smoke 85

Lucky 4 a.m. 86

Ruby Takes a Stone 87

4 Marriage in Dog Years

The Berry Fields, 1959 91

Wilma's Wanderings 92

A List of Wonders from the Time of Small 93

Before I Could Be Human 94

Why I Was Medieval as a Child 95

When Writing Became Easy 96

At Home 97

Late Night Love Letter, New Orleans 98

Marriage in Dog Years 100

August, 1997 101

Our Son at One Year Old 102

Milk 103

Every So Once in a While 104

Home Alchemy 105

Aunt Mar Changes How We See 106

Ten Years After the Last Words 107

Kindling 108

In a Trance I Figure It All Out 109

In the Children 110

Interviews

Jefferson Public Radio interview

Editorial Reviews

"Kim Stafford is the most humane poet going, devotedly writing every day, sharing encouragement and generous care everywhere. His eloquent lines, so deeply attentive to each moment, shimmer with breathtaking leaps and humble wisdom. They will help you live. Especially now." —Naomi Shihab Nye

"Wild Honey, Tough Salt demonstrates Kim Stafford’s remarkable talent for coming to the heart. These poems rise beautifully and naturally from their settings, whether a morning in a forest, or inside an ancient myth, or high on a ridge above Big Basin. Wild Honey, Tough Salt contains poems of quest, reconciliation, and joy, offering the reader enlightening variations on the essence of heart and self in communion. 'Everything spoke, and I was / nothing but listening.'" —Pattiann Rogers, Burroughs Medal winner for Lifetime Achievement in Nature Poetry

"Stafford’s work reads like an invitation to citizenship, stewardship, and self. This is poetry that asks nothing and everything of us. That accepts and loves us, asks us to rise simply by paying attention." — Tina Ontiveros of Klindt's Booksellers for NW Book Lovers

Kim Stafford's reading at Annie Bloom's Books

From the Publisher