Pax Femina: Women in William Stafford's West

William Stafford was often viewed by critics and colleagues as a soft, perhaps minor, poetic voice. This sense is compounded by his pacifism, environmentalism, and other traditionally "feminine" archetypes that he embraces. Yet Stafford's creation of women characters and voices is still troubling. The women who populate Stafford's poems are very limited, one-dimensional figures. Stafford's personae use the female figure to cathect or catalyze the anger of the male speaker or to illustrate the kindness and virtue of the speaker to the less fortunate woman. Stafford's defensive insistence on the existence of the wild "wolf" in his poetry is a symbol of how his so-called feminine sensibilities about nature and culture are embedded with a personal ambivalence about women. Stafford's speakers insist on man's peaceful coexistence with his fellow men and with nature but cannot seem to make peace with the women around them.