18 pages • 36 minutes read
William StaffordBurning a Book
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1999A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Further Reading & Resources
Related Poems
"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. Stafford’s use of personification and his characteristic brevity makes “At the Bomb Testing Site” an important pairing to “Burning a Book,” centering an individual perspective on larger-scale violence.
"At the Un-National Monument along the Canadian Border" by William E. Stafford (1998)
Stafford’s pacifist identity informed much of the political poetry he wrote throughout his career. “At the Un-National Monument along the Canadian Border” was published in the collection of poetry, The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems, and highlights the amount of active participation necessary in being a pacifist and conscientious objector. In this poem, Stafford plays with language, using the prefix un- to negate unconventional words, likening it to “Burning a Book.” Stafford makes active political statements in both poems without negating his distinctive, soft-spoken poetic voice. Stafford is plainspoken yet powerful in his appeals, calling out societal ignorance by using his poetry as a vehicle for social and political change.
Further Literary Resources
"Moral Bonfires: An Exploration of Book Burning in American Society" by Lisa Olsen (2021)
The critical essay, “Moral Bonfires: An Exploration of Book Burning in American Society,” written by Master of Information researcher, Lisa Olsen, provides an introduction to the history of book burning within the American context. This essay serves as an excellent contextual resource, necessary in understanding the historical allusions present within Stafford’s own “Burning a Book.”
Olsen’s essay considers the connotations of censorship as they relate to historical book burnings, and seeks to expose the fine line that exists between censoring information and the American freedoms found in the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. Olsen’s primary focus lies in understanding why individuals attempt to control specific information through the destructive spectacle of book burning, questioning various, historical justifications for these attacks on knowledge and culture in the same way Stafford does in his poetry.
"The Danger of a Single Story" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2009)
Nigerian novelist and activist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie warns against accepting one singular point of view as the universal truth about any country, culture, or identity in her famous TED Talk, “The Danger of a Single Story.” Adichie aligns with Stafford’s central argument within “Burning a Book,” asserting that the danger of censorship lies in the rejection of any ideology counter to one’s own lived experiences. Adichie details how this rejection renders the nuanced experiences of the other down to stereotypes, promoting ignorance through a narrowed view of the world. Adichie and Stafford both state that diverse perspectives are necessary in understanding the whole truth about any given society, and ought to be shared—not suppressed nor silenced.
"1984— Appendix: The Principles of Newspeak" by George Orwell (1949)
In “Burning a Book,” Stafford alludes to George Orwell’s 1984 through his use of negation (see: Poem Analysis). Thematically, Orwell’s 1984 is extremely similar to Stafford’s poem. The novel examines censorship in relation to language and thought in the dystopian city of Oceania. The appendix to 1984 offers a detailed explanation of Oceania’s official language, Newspeak: a limited vocabulary constructed of words that have been entirely stripped of their original meanings, leaving room for only one singular interpretation of each word. The nuances of censorship through language expose the deeper meaning of Stafford’s “Burning a Book,” exemplifying Stafford’s plain yet extremely purposeful method of writing.
