The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems

William Stafford filled his life and ours with poetry of challenge and consolation. The Way It Is gathers unpublished poems from his last year, including the poem he wrote the day he died, as well as an essential selection of works from throughout his career. An editorial team including his son Kim Stafford, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Robert Bly collaborated on shaping this book of Stafford's life in poetry.

The poems in The Way It Is encompass Stafford's rugged domesticity, the political edge of his irony, and his brave starings off into emptiness.