Wild Honey, Tough Salt

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.

"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