Sound of the Ax

Sound of the Ax brings together for the first time over four hundred aphorisms and twenty-six aphoristic poems by one of America’s most essential poets of the twentieth century. Many readers are familiar with the trenchant nature of William Stafford’s poems, with lines such as “Justice will take us millions of intricate moves” and “Your job is to find what the world is trying to be,” but have never had the opportunity to read a sustained selection from the thousands of wise, witty, and penetrating statements he created in over forty years of daily writing in his journal. In keeping with Stafford’s varied interests, the aphorisms in Sound of the Ax explore many topics—war and peace, involvement, aging, appearances, fear, egotism, writing, nature, animals, suffering, faith, living an ethical life, and so on—with his incisive view. The poems are either made up entirely or primarily aphorisms, and range from the well-known “Things I Learned Last Week” to some never before collected.