William Stafford

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What biographical connections to William Stafford can be made when analyzing "The Farm on the Great Plains"?

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William Stafford's poem "The Farm on the Great Plains" is deeply connected to his biographical experiences. Raised in Kansas during the Great Depression and Dust Bowl, Stafford's family often moved in search of work, influencing his themes of longing for home and connection. The poem reflects his memories of the vast western landscape and his family's transient life. It uses a telephone line metaphor to express emotional connections and the ultimate realization that "home" resides within oneself.

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American poet William Edgar Stafford (1914–1993) was born and raised in Kansas and during his youth experienced both the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl (both took place in the 1930s). The family, like many others, spent a period of time moving from place to place in search of work during these very difficult times. No one place was home for long. As a poet, Stafford revisits the memories and images of the vast western landscape and of life experience in a family that for some time wandered for survival.

The poem "Farm on the Great Plains" explores a longing for home—both a place and the people in it. Composed of seven stanzas, each containing four lines, the poem describes this yearning and its resolution. A telephone line appears as a metaphor for an emotional connection in the very beginning of the poem. A farm on the great plain "tugs...

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an end of the line," as a sense of longing or tenderness tugs on a heartstring.

In the second stanza the poet writes, "I call that farm every year / no one is home . . . ." The telephone represents a longing to connect with the past—the home, mother, and father who are long gone and cannot be reached through the familiar habit of picking up the phone and dialing, as "the line gives only a hum."

In the third stanza, the poet writes that one year on what will be "at last the right one," he will succeed in reaching someone in that old farmhouse. But this time he will make the attempt with "an eye tapered for braille," with which he can see the "last one left at the place," and "through the dark my braille eye / will lovingly touch his face." Universal love sent out to a stranger, the last tenant, through the imaginary tool of an eye which can "feel" (in an emotional sense) finally provides the answer.

The last tenant confirms, in the fifth stanza, that Mother and Father are not there, allowing the poet to move on to a sense of resignation. In the sixth stanza, the poet begins to ask, "But you—are you the one . . . ?" The sentence is left incomplete because it no longer matters what role this person may have had in the sequence of events. The poet has found his answer: "Then the line will be gone / because both ends will be home: / no space, no birds, no farm." The poet comes to the resolution that "home" exists within himself.

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