William Stafford’s Down in My Heart: The Poetics of Pacifism and the Limits of Lyric

Abstract

This essay argues that William Stafford's Down in My Heart, his memoir of his life in the Civilian Public Service Camps as a conscientious objector during the Second World War, anticipates the central questions of his pacifist poetry. In particular, the memoir stages the drama between Stafford's poetics—manifested in a vision of the beloved community, where consensus decision‐making is essential and accommodation to the State necessary—and the press of history, war, and absolute resistance. Stafford's memoir informs and exposes the limitations of Stafford's poetry. On the one hand, it anticipates Stafford's preoccupation with building an imagined community that respects solitude and difference. On the other hand, it also succeeds in creating a dialogic tension between nonviolent dissent and absolute resistance in ways that Stafford's poetry does not. The memoir, therefore, is a crucial text of Stafford poetic project and represents an important moment in the history of nonviolent literature.