Sajda Omar

ENG 570

Midterm Paper

May 3rd, 2018

Our Streets, Her Cancer: An Analysis of “Bess” by William Stafford

William Stafford’s “Bess” offers a heartbreaking, yet strangely uplifting story about a

woman slipping from her community and life as she once knew it after being diagnosed with

cancer. There is a distinct characterization of Bess, as she is seen keeping her cancer hidden in

order to keep her friends from realizing the inevitability of their lives. Bess is a selfless, helpful,

and kind woman who gives to all until she no longer can. As one of the first to be featured in

Stafford’s Allegiances, “Bess” is both a memorial of a small town librarian, and explores key

themes in Stafford’s work: everyday people, the symbiotic relationship between life and death,

and the way the mechanics of the poem emphasize grief, joy, loss, and eternity.

1 Ours are the streets where Bess first met her

2 cancer. She went to work every day past the

3 secure houses. At her job in the library

4 she arranged better and better flowers, and when

5 students asked for books her hand went out

6 to help. In the last year of her life

7 she had to keep her friends from knowing

8 how happy they were. She listened while they

9 complained about food or work or the weather.

10 And the great national events danced

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11 their grotesque, fake importance. Always

12 Pain moved where she moved. She walked

13 ahead; it came. She hid; it found her.

14 No one ever served another so truly;

15 no enemy ever meant so strong a hate.

16 It was almost as if there was no room

17 left for her on earth. But she remembered

18 where joy used to live. She straightened its flowers;

19 she did not weep when she passed its houses;

20 and when finally she pulled into a tiny corner

21 and slipped from pain, her hand opened

22 again, and the streets opened, and she wished all well.

How “Bess” Came to Be

There are apparently no manuscript copies of “Bess” to be found in the William Stafford

Archives, though Stafford himself published an article about the poem’s creation, “The Writing

of Bess.” Available in the William Stafford Archives is a scan of the 3-hole punched typescript

of the poem, which came “from Stafford's documentary copies, which he used for final editing

and tracking where [poems] were published” (Selley), and is dated August 1965. This typescript

shows that “Bess” was first published in The Carleton Miscellany in the 1966. The poem was

published in several anthologies and literary magazines, and finally, Allegiances.

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The typescript version is very similar to its published counterpart. It begins “These are

the streets where Bess first met/ her cancer” (see Appendix 1). Two corrections made by Stafford

are scribbled in, replacing “These” with “Ours” and enjambing the line at “met her/ cancer”

instead of “met/ her cancer.” The substitution of “These” with “Ours” suggests a separation

between Bess and the rest of the community, a separation that the poem tells us has been made

by Bess herself. The streets belong to Bess’s town, but no longer belong to Bess. After meeting

her cancer, Bess has no ownership of the streets as they are the streets for the living. Though

Bess does not die until the end of the poem, from the very beginning Bess is characterized as an

“other” in the community, almost as a sort of walking dead person. This otherness is only

heightened with the abruptness that the enjambed “cancer” employs on the second line. Bess

does not even own her cancer, the line breaks between “her” and “cancer,” focusing solely on the

sickness and creating another separation. The abruptness of “cancer” also mirrors the realization

of the inevitability of death, a realization that goes unnoticed by the rest of the community. The

last stanza ends, “And the great national events danced/ their grotesque, fake importance” (line

10-1), illustrating the way Bess’s outlook on certain aspects of life have changed. “Grotesque” is

an odd word choice to describe a great national event, such as the Super Bowl or a presidential

election, and its morbid connotation with death serves the same purpose of separation between

the living world and Bess’s. In “The Writing of ‘Bess,’” Stafford writes, “[Bess’s friends’]

troubles take on an aspect so trivial that Bess can’t bear to let them know what she sees…part of

her work becomes enduring the loneliness of one who knows” (99-100). Bess now sees that her

world is vastly different from her friends’, that the pain of knowing death so significantly

changes the perspective on life. Therefore, just as death may seem morbid to her friends, Bess
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sees the “grotesque” triviality in her friends’ life, and wishes to protect it. Bess still sees the

comfort in the trivialities of life.

“Bess” in Context of Allegiances

Stafford opens his book Allegiances with poems that address specific people: “With Kit,

Age 7, at the Beach,” “Bess,” and “Monuments for a Friendly Girl at a Tenth Grade Party.”

Placed before all of these poems is Stafford’s introductory piece, “This Book,” which addresses

the reader directly, the speaker characterized as the actual book, Allegiances (Holden 18). The

ordering of these poems plays into the idea of allegiances, committing his writing to people who

have held a place in Stafford’s mind, who have stayed there long enough to be written about. It

does not go unnoticed, too, that with the exception of “This Book,” the first three poems of

Allegiances are about named women. “Bess” is sandwiched between two poems exploring

commitment and tribute, respectfully, in the context of Stafford’s own life, as they feature his

daughter, Kit, and an old classmate who died in the Peace Corps, according to the poem itself.

Alternatively, Stafford as an active figure is not present in “Bess”; instead of addressing a

character directly as himself, Stafford simply tells the story as a distant narrator, focusing on

Bess navigating through her life and eventual death.

The absence of Stafford as a character within “Bess,” then, is a conscious choice to

provide Bess with what she would not allow herself: the grieving of her own life as she lived it.

The first stanza follows Bess in her everyday life, living it as if she were not dying, or rather,

living it knowing that nobody else is aware. Bess is aware, and Stafford wants us to be, too: “She

went to work every day past the/ secure houses” (line 2-3). The word “secure” not only describes

the sturdiness of a home, but also the security of those inside of it, the security the community
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continues to have in living. Bess no longer has this security. Because she keeps her awareness to

herself, she others herself from the community; she passes these “secure houses,” but will not let

her day be defined by them. At the library where she works, Bess “arranged better and better

flowers” (line 4). This line is eerily reminiscent of a funeral service, suggesting that every day

Bess is closer and closer to her death. But also, “Better and better” gives the indication that

although Bess lives with her death at bay, she concentrates on improving upon the time she still

has.

The pivotal line “In the last year of her life/ she had to keep her friends from knowing/

how happy they were” (line 6-8), Stafford closes in on Bess’s heartbreaking selflessness. She

does not want those around her to experience the nearing shadow of death. For her friends, death

is still an abstraction, while Bess lives with the concrete knowledge of her passing daily.

The second stanza connects to the first with the enjambed “Always” (line 11). She listens

to her friends complain “always” but is also “always” followed by her pain. Stafford writes, “in a

single, isolated word that reaches over to end the first stanza by beginning the second, the inner

travail of Bess begins” (100). This is a seamless transition between the public and private life of

Bess, weaved through as the centering of the poem which is comprised of 22 lines split evenly.

In the first half, we learn about Bess and how she interacts with the town; the second half shows

us how Bess interacts with herself, with her cancer and her pain. As “Always” holds the poem

together at the center, it also incorporates the nature of Allegiances. Regardless of Bess’s death,

she will now always be remembered by Stafford, as well as his readers, immortalized in a poem

named after her.

The Collective and the Composite

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Stafford often uses forms of a collective “we” in his poetry, encompassing the ideas and

thoughts of not just himself but those around him, nature and human alike. Jonathan Holden

writes, “Stafford’s stance as a writer is democratic, informed by a strong sense of commonality

with other human beings. This sense accounts for much of his stylization” (6). In both “With Kit,

Aged 7, at the Beach” and “Monuments for a Friendly Girl at a Tenth Grade Party,” it is clear

who is included within the “we” and “our” of the poems. “We” is used to include Stafford and

the other characters in the poem. There are two instances of the collective “we” found in “Bess:”

the first line ,“Our streets…,” and the last, “and she wished all well” (emphasis added). These

instances serve to further show a separation between Bess and the community of the living.

An interesting contrast can be seen between “Bess” and the poem, “Thinking for Berky.”

In the latter, Stafford introduces Berky, who may be injured as inferred by the sirens he hears.

Not only does he himself hear “the patrol/ screaming towards some drama” (line 2-3), but the

last stanza is directed towards Berky, therefore making Stafford present within the collective we

of the poem. In the penultimate line he writes, “there are things not solved in our town…” Unlike

in “Bess,” Stafford is including Berky in the collective we of the town, possibly because she is

not proclaimed dead, it is never said what happens to Berky. In a way, this could make Bess and

Berky in quite similar situations, but their experiences differ in that the town is more acutely

aware of Berky’s “drama.” Bess keeps her cancer closely to herself in her town and though she

is presented as alive in the beginning of the poem, we know by the end she will die, and that

separates her from the collective.

In his article, Stafford confirms that Bess was a real woman from his town, a librarian

who worked with his wife at the school (99). This reinforces the claim that the “we” in the poem

includes Stafford. Though he doesn’t appear himself as a character, he is still separated from
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Bess as a living narrator, by default including him in the collective. By having “our town” and

“all well” as collectives framing the poem, readers themselves are separated from Bess,

beginning and ending with the suggestion that Bess is not alive at all as the poem moves down

the page. The present tense of “Ours are the streets” suggests in the beginning of the poem that

Bess is already dead. The past tense of “ and she wished all well” has a longing effect, as if Bess

is still wishing the town well, both figuratively and literally.

The fact that “Bess” is based off a real person creates a distinction that is important, as

Stafford has been known to create composite characters for his poems. For example, Ella from

“Homecoming” is “a fictional composite of many girls that he remembered” (Holden 3). Though

Bess was a person Stafford knew, he still finds ways to insert his own feelings and perspectives

in the poem. Stafford writes, “I can see some of my own familiar inner streets crowding into this

poem: in the form of the belittling reference to the great national events…I live by these crochets

of mine and they insinuate my points of view into whatever I write” (101). Clearly, Stafford is

inventive in many of the ways he writes Bess’s experience—he composites his own perspectives

on death and life and uses it to propel Bess’s story, to empathize with it and give it its own life.

Bess being based off a real person helps to situate the “we” in the poem, Stafford is found

within the collective in “Bess.” Having these two collectives as the frame of the poem, readers

themselves are separated from Bess, beginning and ending with the suggestion that Bess is not

alive at all as the poem moves down the page. The present tense of “Ours are the streets”

suggests in the beginning of the poem that Bess is already dead. The past tense of “ and she

wished all well” has a longing effect, as if Bess is still wishing the town well, both figuratively

and literally.
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Pain and Joy, Life and Death

The second stanza of “Bess” accelerates significantly. As readers, we are brought into the

very real and immediate experience of Bess’s fight with her cancer. “Pain” is characterized as a

follower, a shadow that moves where she moves and finds her in her hiding places. The two are

made out as bleakly harmonious companions: “No one ever served another so truly;/ no enemy

ever meant so strong a hate” (line 14-5). The absence of clear pronouns blurs the line between

Bess and Pain; they serve each other, they hate each other. But the second stanza is not only pain,

as Bess “remembered where joy used to live” (line 18). If pain is an allegorized character

representing death, then joy, here, represents life. Stafford again connects the two halves of the

poem by bringing back images of flowers and homes seen in the first stanza. In the second stanza,

Bess “straightens [joy’s] flowers” and “she did not weep when she passed [joy’s] houses” (lines

18-9). She continues to interact with the life, the joy, around her while she lives with her pain,

her death.

There is a duality in these symbolisms, however. Stafford is never so black and white that

his symbols could be so cleanly aligned. In describing the actual death of Bess, Stafford writes

“when she finally pulled into a tiny corner/ and slipped from pain…” (line 20-1). To slip from

pain is to die, but also to experience the relief of no longer living with that pain. This misaligns

the metaphors and complicates things. In a way, Stafford points out the very pain of living

among a joy she can no longer participate in. In her death, Bess experiences a new kind of joy, or

rather, a relief, respective to her situation. The use of “slip” is also found in Stafford’s “So Long,”

where he “slip[s] away into the gloom like a happy fish” while on a walk. In this instance, to slip

is a sort of lucky avoidance. The ambiguity of the word’s implication serves the melancholy tone

of the poem.
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This is also not the only time Stafford relates a corner to death or dying. In A Glass Face

in the Rain, the poem “In a Corner” is an odd reflection on support and the places one goes when

in pain. The second stanza of the poem reads:

Now if I’m traveling maybe a bad headache

sends me to lean in a corner. Each eye

has a wall. Father, Mother—they’re gone,

and that person died, when I leaned before.

The corner never feels little enough,

And I roll my head for the world, and its need

And this wild, snuggling need and pain of my own. (191)

Here it seems that to be within a corner is to be within the pain of death or pain of loss. Bess

pulls herself “into a tiny corner,” maybe the ideal compactness Stafford longs for in “In a Corner.”

To be in the corner of two walls is a metaphor for enduring pain, as Bess does when she slips

from her own.

What Critics Say

Some critics, such as William Heyen, have found Allegiances as a whole to be a quite

strange collection in comparison to previous works; in fact, Heyen classifies it as inferior to other

Stafford books. Heyen writes, “Allegiances is more hit and miss, less sure of itself, sketchier…It

may well be, given his allegiances, that William Stafford has to write two or three bad poems for

every good one” (126, 129). However, Gerald Burns considers the content of Allegiances makes

the collection “the most dangerous American book since Walden” (26). Burns writes, after

pointing out the density and deliberate nature of each poem in the collection,
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What Stafford has done [is] sit quiet and feel out what relation is possible between us and

the frightening land buried under all that asphalt, and how such a peculiar people as

ourselves can live together with something like dignity (26).

Burns’ assertions are most likely due to the fact that Allegiances focuses so meticulously on

human experience and its connection with the world around us, that it begins to reveal new

qualities about humans themselves, about how they react to pain and joy. Not only that, but

Stafford removes himself from much of the collection—simply flipping through the first part of

Allegiances, one will see that all the poems focus on people, real or composite, from Stafford’s

town, the most “I” centric poem is about Stafford’s brother’s death. Because of this the reader

has room to experience the people and places he writes in allegiance to.

There is little written on “Bess” specifically, which could probably be explained by the

lack of manuscript copies, as well as the several other Stafford poems one could write about that

exhibit similar themes. In a way, there is an irony in the little attention given to a poem about a

woman who tries her best to keep the attention away from herself. However, Judith Kitchen

writes that through Allegiances, Stafford gives a voice to “those who cannot speak for

themselves” (55) and amplifies them in his own quiet way, honoring the parts of those voices

gone unnoticed, like Bess’s selflessness.

Though critics often considered Stafford’s work simple, there is nothing common or

reliable about the ways in which Stafford expresses such concepts as life and death. They flow

together— “her hand opened again,/ and the streets opened” (line 21-2)—because Stafford blurs

the lines between them. Kitchen states, “[The] concept of death as a fusion with all that is natural

is at the heart of Stafford’s poetry…Death—both his and that of others—is earned through the

lived life.” (46). Death is what comes after life, just as life is what comes before death. Though
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life and death appear on two ends of the earth, Stafford puts them in the same town, in Bess’s

open hand, in our streets.

Works Cited

Burns, Gerald. “A Book to Build On.” On William Stafford: The Worth of Local Things, edited

by Tom Andrews. University of Michigan, 1993. Pg. 25-6.

Heyen, William. “William Stafford’s Allegiances.” On William Stafford: The Worth of Local

Things, edited by Tom Andrews. University of Michigan, 1993. Pg. 121-31

Holden, Jonathan. The Mark to Turn. The University Press of Kansas, 1976. Print.

Kitchen, Judith. Writing the World: Understanding William Stafford. Corvallis: Oregon State

University Press, 1999. Print.

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Stafford, William. “Bess.” The Way It Is: New & Selected Poems by William Stafford.

Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 1998. Print.

---. “In a Corner.” ---.

---. “Thinking of Berky.” ---.

---. Allegiances: New Poems by William Stafford. Harper and Row, 1970. Print.

---. Crossing Unmarked Snow: Further Views on the Writer’s Vocation. Edited by Paul Merchant

and Vincent Wixon. The University of Michigan Press, 1998. Pg. 98-102. Print.

See Appendix 1 on page 13.

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Courtesy of the William Stafford Archive.