A review by toniapeckover
The Answers Are Inside the Mountains: Meditations on the Writing Life by William Stafford

4.0

Reading Stafford's "Poets on Poetry" series books are like being dropped into the middle of a wine-soaked conversation that has been going on for a couple of hours now. Half the time you don't know where you are and the other half you're leaning in and listening hard because you know this is important stuff if you could just enter into the rhythm of it. This book in particular, with its strange collection of conversations, interviews and poems, reveals more about Stafford as a human being and I began to understand exactly what it is that draws me to him repeatedly. Stafford believes in goodness and he writes with this in mind. He wants to write about "the vision of life haunted by some unerasable good deed..." Contrast that with so much of modern writing, which is about revealing the hidden sin and the blistering wound at the core of the soul and you begin to understand what makes Stafford special. He also has a profound respect for others, whether that be his readers, his students, or fellow writers and a natural reticence for pursuing fame. All this lends an honesty and gentleness to his work that I find greatly appealing. I don't know if this book would appeal to all writers - but I will be reading it and quoting from it repeatedly.