Frank Stanford (1948–1978) was dubbed “a swamprat Rimbaud” by poet Lorenzo Thomas. He grew up in Mississippi, Tennessee, and Arkansas, where he wrote many of his most powerful poems. Stanford wrote ten books of poetry—eight volumes in the last seven years of his life—including The Singing Knives, Ladies from Hell, Arkansas Bench Stone, and The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You, a mostly unpunctuated poem that is more than 15,000 lines long. Stanford died in 1978 of three self-inflicted gunshot wounds. The years following his death saw the publication of a number of posthumous collections, and his legacy is still strongly felt in the world of American letters.
WORKS THAT HAVE APPEARED IN NARRATIVE:
- Lighted Room, poetry, in Poems of the Week: 2013–2014
- I Would Have a Woman as Real as Death , poetry, in Poems of the Week: 2012–2013
- Search Party, poetry, in Poems of the Week: 2011–2012