{"id":11304,"date":"2012-05-23T10:00:07","date_gmt":"2012-05-23T15:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/?p=11304"},"modified":"2012-05-23T00:14:57","modified_gmt":"2012-05-23T05:14:57","slug":"original-william-stafford-the-land-between-the-rivers-poem-discovered-in-apsu-woodward-library","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/2012\/05\/23\/original-william-stafford-the-land-between-the-rivers-poem-discovered-in-apsu-woodward-library\/","title":{"rendered":"Original William Stafford \u201cThe Land Between the Rivers\u201d Poem discovered in APSU Woodward Library"},"content":{"rendered":"

Austin Peay State University<\/h2>\n

\"AustinClarksville, TN<\/strong> – On a Wednesday morning in April, Kentucky journalist and author Carol Niswonger was busy combing through the archives at Austin Peay State University\u2019s Woodward Library, conducting research for her new book on Land Between The Lakes, when she discovered something a bit unusual. Tucked away in a thin, manila folder was a short, hand-written poem titled \u201cThe Land Between the Rivers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I started to read it, I said, \u2018that\u2019s it perfectly,\u2019\u201d Niswonger said. \u201cThe poem, it epitomized the feelings of that area. It had such an emotional attachment to the land and the surroundings. I thought the poet was someone who lived there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>

An original, handwritten poem, \u201cThe Land Between the Rivers,\u201d by the late poet William Stafford was recently discovered in the APSU Woodward Library. (Photo by Beth Liggett\/APSU staff)<\/p><\/div>\n

But Niswonger didn\u2019t recognize the name signed at the bottom of the poem. Maybe it wasn\u2019t by a local poet, she thought. So one afternoon, she decided to Google the name, \u201cWilliam Stafford.\u201d That\u2019s when she realized she might have discovered an original copy of a poem by one of the 20th century\u2019s great American poets.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere it was \u2013 William Stafford, poet extraordinaire,\u201d she said. \u201cIt just can\u2019t be him, I thought. It didn\u2019t have written down there, \u2018I am a famous poet.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Stafford, who died in 1993, was the 20th Poet Laureate of the United States and the author of 62 books of poetry. A non-profit organization, The Friends of William Stafford, maintains an extensive archive of the poet\u2019s works and personal journals. Niwonger emailed the Oregon-based group a scanned copy of the poem, and Dennis Schmidling, the organization\u2019s board chair, authenticated the handwriting as belonging to Stafford. The poem was also confirmed as being one of Stafford\u2019s, published in the journal Plainsong, and in his collection, \u201cAn Oregon Message.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was awe struck,\u201d Scott Shumate, APSU digital services assistant, said. \u201cIt\u2019s probably the biggest thing we\u2019ve found. There\u2019s so much here. The only time I get to look at a lot of it is when someone comes in to do research.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shumate works in the APSU archives room, which is tucked into a small office on the library\u2019s second floor. Inside that room, file cabinets compete for space with crowded shelves of rare books, old newspapers and Austin Peay yearbooks dating back to the 1940s.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve had some fun surprises on the things I\u2019ve found, but this takes the cake for sure,\u201d Shumate said.<\/p>\n

The poem was discovered among the papers of Dr. Joseph Henry, a former APSU professor who conducted extensive research on the Land Between The Lakes area. How exactly Stafford\u2019s poem found its way into that collection is a bit of a mystery. What is known is that the poet visited APSU numerous times during the \u201870s, \u201880s and \u201890s. And the handwritten poem was on the back of a poster, advertising a reading by Stafford on March 27th, 1981, at the APSU Wesley Foundation.<\/p>\n

[320left]\u201cWe learned that he would leave behind as a thank you a poem, usually about the area, to the people who were putting him up,\u201d Shumate said. \u201cHe signed this one, \u2018March 26,\u2019 so he must have written it the night before the reading. He probably stayed somewhere here in town, and left this poster with the poem on the back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. David Till, poet and emeritus professor of English at APSU, said Stafford had a close relationship with the University, and he usually delivered his readings to packed auditoriums of students and community members.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was early on one of the poets we brought to Austin Peay when Malcolm Glass and I started the visiting writers series,\u201d Till said. \u201cWe liked him so well, and he liked us so well, we brought him back in the \u201870s, \u201880s and early \u201890s. He was not just a good poet, he was a great moral force.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cgift\u201d Stafford left APSU after that 1981 reading is a powerful, three-stanza poem in which the narrator mourns the flooding of his land to create the LBL natural area. The second stanza of the work begins, \u201cHere\u2019s where the house would be if I\/had a son, if we owned the land, if the lake\/hadn\u2019t come.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now that the poem has been authenticated, Shumate said the library\u2019s first priority is to preserve it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt had been folded all these years, so we\u2019re going to try and flatten out that fold,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re also going to take care of things to make sure it doesn\u2019t deteriorate over time. We\u2019d like to show it off, but we want to make sure it\u2019s properly preserved at first.\u201d<\/p>\n

For more information on the poem, contact Shumate at shumates@apsu.edu<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Austin Peay State University Clarksville, TN – On a Wednesday morning in April, Kentucky journalist and author Carol Niswonger was busy combing through the archives at Austin Peay State University\u2019s Woodward Library, conducting research for her new book on Land Between The Lakes, when she discovered something a bit unusual. Tucked away in a thin, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[23,7720,6831,262,14779,12754,14782,14783,4117,6880,4363,2142,12755,3556,11808,14780,14781],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xGYI-2Wk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11304"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11304"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11306,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11304\/revisions\/11306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}