Poetry. WINTERWARD is the title of the 1954 creative dissertation that William Stafford wrote for his Ph.D. in English at the University of Iowa. This collection contains poems that would eventually be published in West of Your City, Traveling through the Dark, and The Rescued Year. In addition to shining a light on Stafford's early poetic gifts, WINTERWARD is a blueprint for the themes, tones, and concerns that were central to Stafford's life as writer, thinker, and citizen. This collection is as much an aesthetic bookmark of a moment as it is a looking glass into a narrative that includes Stafford as a National Book Award Winner, Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, and ultimately as one of the major poets of his generation.

"William Stafford is a master. He belongs to that category of artists the Japanese have named 'national treasures.' He offers the work of art as well as sharp ideas about the craft. One of his most amazing gifts to poetry is his theme of the golden thread. He believes that whenever you set a detail down in language, it becomes the end of the thread... and every detail... will lead you to amazing riches." Robert Bly