table of contents

PART ONE: IN MEDIAS RES

Traveling through the Dark

In Medias Res

Elegy

A Stared Story

Thinking for Berky

With My Crowbar Key

The Thought Machine

Mouse Night: One of Our Games

Parentage

The Research Team in the Mountains

Holding the Sky

The Job

Prairie Town

Tornado

Conservative

The Woman at Banff

The Tillamook Burn

The Old Hamer Place

On Quitting a Little College

Reporting Back

The Poets' Annual Indigence Report

In Response to a Question

With One Launched Look

B.C.

Captive

The View from Here

Lit Instructor

The Star in the Hills

I Was in the City All Day

A Poet to a Novelist

Universe Is One Place

In the Night Desert

PART TWO: BEFORE THE BIG STORM

Before the Big Storm

Things We Did That Meant Something

At Liberty School

Lake Chelan

The Museum at Tillamook

Late at Night

Summer Will Rise

Fall Journey

A Dedication

Chickens the Weasel Killed

Requiem

The Last Friend

The Lyf So Short. . .

The Only Card I Got on My Birthday Was from an Insurance Man

At the Old Place

Love the Butcher Bird Lurks Everywhere

Learning

Adults Only

Wisteria Jones

In the Museum

Time's Exile

Birthday

Glances

Fall Wind

As Pippa Lilted

The Trip

PART THREE: REPRESENTING FAR PLACES

Representing Far Places

From the Gradual Grass

Long Distance

The Peters Family

In Fear and Valor

The Title Comes Later

At Cove on the Crooked River

Last Vacation

Looking for Someone

What God Used for Eyes Before We Came

Returned to Say

Found in a Storm

Late Thinker

A Look Returned

Interlude

In Dear Detail, by Ideal Light

The Wanderer Awaiting Preferment

Vocation

related resources

Reviews

National Book Award Speech

Teaching Card Selection

William Stafford and His First Publishers: The Making of West of Your City and Traveling Through the Dark