Burning a Book

"A Tentative Welcome to Readers" by William E. Stafford (1980)

“A Tentative Welcome to Readers” first appeared in the January Issue of Poetry Magazine (1980). The speaker of the poem directly addresses readers, encouraging them to make conscious decisions about the type of poetry (and information at large) they allow into their lives. “A Tentative Welcome to Readers” offers a more peaceful alternative to the destruction of information found within “Burning a Book,” advocating for the audience’s active participation in the pursuit of knowledge.

Stafford utilizes the same amount of caesura throughout “A Tentative Welcome to Readers” that he does in “Burning a Book,” interrupting several lines with periods and en dashes to emphasize key thematic elements, making this brief, 10-line poem feel longer (see: Literary Devices “Caesura”).

"At the Bomb Testing Site" by William E. Stafford (1986)

Graywolf Press posthumously published Stafford’s critical works of poetry in the 2013 collection, Ask Me: 100 Essential Poems. Stafford’s poem, “At the Bomb Testing Site,” appears in this collection alongside “Burning a Book.” Both poems discuss different facets of human destruction, making them thematically similar. While “Burning a Book” is concerned with the destruction of information, “At the Bomb Testing Site” examines the impact of literal weapons of destruction: bombs.