Traveling through the Dark

“William Stafford’s ‘Travelling Through the Dark’: An Analysis” by A. J. Black (1964)

Among the earliest and most impactful readings of Stafford’s poem, Black’s analysis was the first to suggest something darker behind Stafford’s apparently simple narrative, something “profound lying beneath the poem’s easy, conversational tone.” The article explores Stafford as an environmental poet and the dead deer as emblematic of humanity’s crisis with its own ecosystem.

“An Interview with William Stafford” by Cynthia Lofsness (1973)

A wide-ranging and probing interview with Stafford, this article touches on Stafford’s admiration for Whitman’s Transcendentalism, his relationship with his father, and his belief that poetry should reflect and elevate the day-to-day experiences of the poet. Each theme is critical to understanding the themes of “Traveling Through the Dark.”

“The Forgiving Landscape: The Poetry of William Stafford” by Malouika Mukerji (1981)

Begun as a master’s thesis, this article was among the first to position Stafford in post-WWII American poetry. The article argues that Stafford, despite drawing on his own experiences, could not fit easily into the genre of introspective confessional poets. Rather, Stafford created a different genre in which the poet expressed concerns about their cultural moment and the crises it faced.