Another World Instead

Twenty-eight years old and a conscientious objector during World War II, William Stafford was assigned under penalty of law to work in camps, an internal exile within his own country. In this remarkable collection of poems, nearly all of them never before published, the first decade of Stafford’s writing life is for the first time made available to readers. Edited by the poet Fred Marchant, one of the first marine officers honorably discharged as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, Another World Instead tells the story of a committed pacifist living in a time of war and a writer beginning a major life in American poetry.

“William Stafford’s quiet presence in the landscape of American poetry in my lifetime has been a kind of continuing reassurance whose value always seemed to me beyond question.” —W.S. Merwin

“William Stafford’s poems walk silently and gracefully before you, and then they turn and surprise you with their power, their defiant criticism of contemporary culture. Fred Marchant has put together a wonderful collection.”—Howard Zinn

“It is not easy to write about William Stafford's poetry and its complex simplicities. But Fred Marchant has given us an introduction to the early work that is both insightful and illuminating. These poems are presented in the context of Stafford's years as a Conscientious Objector, and we are able to trace his development as a man and as a poet in ways that are new, at least to me. And what a pleasure to read so many Stafford poems that have not been readily available before.”—Linda Pastan