Reviewed by M. L. Lyons
The Stafford Challenge Anthology: 2024-25 Anthology
Edited by Brian Rohr
Wild Poet Press, 2025, 257 pages, $22.95
Print ISBN: 979-8-9985119-0-5
Ebook ISBN: 979-8-9985119-1-2
Available at https://wildpoetpress.com/anthology/
Some anthologies are like bouquets: artfully arranged around a theme to create a desired effect. Others explore a new field of interest, giving a sense of what is possible. The Stafford Challenge 2024-25 Anthology is more like a field of wildflowers: vibrant, surprising, and diverse. Created to celebrate a Portland-based international poetry project named for William Stafford, the esteemed Oregon and U.S. Poet Laureate who wrote daily for over 50 years, the anthology honors his legacy of presence and persistence.
“Take a deep breath and wait. What seeks you may then appear,” he wrote. Stafford lived this ethos, as does his son Kim Stafford, a renowned poet in his own right, who also writes daily and who gave his blessing to Brian Rohr to use his father’s name and likeness when Brian’s idea for the challenge arose. Thus, The Stafford Challenge poetry project was born, and quickly took root with more than a thousand participants in 28 countries and 49 US states all committed to writing a poem a day for a year.
Of those thousands of poems, over 200 were chosen––including those of 26 local Portland-area poets––to form this collection. The result is a book that truly stands out. Unlike other anthologies, these poems are individually made in this communal commitment.
As editor Brian Rohr states in the introduction:
May your words be blessed with magic and power…And when doubt, hardship, or even joy threaten to silence you, remember this: When the world surprises you, don’t stop writing.
The anthology celebrates community. From the design of the cover to the editing—and even the composition of some of the poems—the spirit of shared creation permeates the book. Created by a small online group, The Stafford Challenge grew into a global exchange. Starting with the first collaborative poem, “Jackals” composed by Stacey Allen, Lesley Barker, Jessie Kim and Pamir Kiciman, there is hope. Parched ground reveals… a wildflower/there/ New life begins, even as the stars collide.
Poets Tod McCoy, Regina Beach, and Jennifer White helped Rohr shape the collection. Notably, the anthology omits contributor bios, allowing readers to connect with the poems on their own terms. Well-known poets such as Kim Stafford, CMarie Fuhrman, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Emilie Lygren appear alongside new and established voices, all in the spirit of Stafford’s democratic generosity.
In “Bagel Boy,” Kim Stafford reflects on youthful openness:
I could ride my bike through town
offering friends and strangers a warm gift
my hands had made. What have I done since
with half the wisdom of that foolishness?
CMarie Fuhrman’s “Between Desire and Expectation” explores intimacy with the earth:
I feel like I am more island, just off
Center. Upon me are the comings
and goings of deer and turkey vultures––…
Isn’t an island just land that lost
its mother?
Naomi Shihab Nye’s “Marfa” resonates deeply:
I feel my father wailing for the children of Gaza
who never hurt anyone. Wailing for
His grandson…In the stars,
the dark, a gentle man sobs for the universe.
The anthology doesn’t avoid life’s hardest questions. In “Pharaohs, Carpenters and Leafcutters,” Trina Gaynon writes: I don’t know who you think made the world. / Word is , / it was the ants… The mantra today is / the same as yesterday.
Lisa Kagan’s whimsical “Alphabet of the Moment” displays the anthology’s tonal variety. eXplain / You are wild / Zoom forward into the moment.
Shelli Hutchinson’s “In the Beginning 1.17.24” captures Portland’s fiercest ice storm: Time stopped in Portland today / The sky rained ice / covering the trees in a glossy cellophane
Several poems are homages. Marilyn Johnston’s “Dear Mr. Stafford” recalls his silent early writing hours: It’s 3:45 am here. I’ve been following you across / the pages of your books on my writing desk / I’ve borrowed your silences. Libby Falk Jones’s “Alone Together” offers a gentle remembrance: I held your poem in my hand, / Your typewriter was like my mother’s vintage, / keys slightly askew.
Written after the height of COVID, the collection pulses with awareness of time, loss, and connection. Poems like Aliyah Al-Amin’s “A Plate of Grief” cut deeply: grief is ravenously / filling my mouth, trying to, / hold on to any bit of you left.
Other elegiac works include Tim Conroy’s “Bloodstone,” Anya Zamiar’s “Street Crossing,” and Andy Smith’s “Small Wall.” Grief is present, but so is grace.
The anthology closes as it opens—with collective spirit. “Poetry Unlocked My Jail Cell,” a group poem by the 2024 cohort, concludes:
The best endings are also beginnings
I stitched stories together because you also were sowing
Not a beginning or an ending, continuing…
2024 will be reborn as a book.
And so it is.
The Stafford Challenge is more than a book. It’s a movement of the spirit. And like wildflower fields, it invites us in—to pause, to notice, and to bloom.
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