Frank Stanford (born Francis Gildart Smith; August 1, 1948 – June 3, 1978) was an American poet. He is most known for his epic, The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You – a labyrinthine poem without stanzas or punctuation. In addition, Stanford published six shorter books of poetry throughout his twenties, and three posthumous collections of his writings (as well as a book of selected poems) have also been published.
Biography
Early life and education Frank Stanford was born Francis Gildart Smith on August 1, 1948, to widow Dorothy Margaret Smith at the Emery Memorial Home in Richton, Mississippi.Wright, C. D. "Frank Stanford: Blue Yodel Of A Wayfaring Stranger," Oxford American, Issue 52, pp. 98–105. Winter 2006.Frank Stanford at the Social Security Death Index. Confirms August 1, 1948 birth. He was soon adopted by a single divorcee named Dorothy Gilbert Alter (1911–2000),Dorothy Stanford at the Social Security Death Index. who was Firestone's first female manager.Stanford, Frank. The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You, biographical note and C. D. Wright's preface. No place given: Lost Roads no. 50, 2000. . In 1952, Gilbert married successful Memphis levee engineer Albert Franklin Stanford (1884–1963),Albert Stanford at the Social Security Death Index. who subsequently also adopted "Frankie" and his younger, adoptive sister, "Ruthie" (Bettina Ruth). Stanford attended Sherwood Elementary School and Sherwood Junior High School in Memphis until 1961 when the family moved to Mountain Home, Arkansas, following A. F. Stanford's retirement;Subiaco Academy records, Registrar's office. Accessed by Registrar Lou Trusty at Subiaco Academy on November 19, 2008. Stanford attended Sherwood Junior High School for 7th grade (1960–1961), Mountain Home Junior High School for 8th grade (1961–1962), Mountain Home High School for 9th and 10th grades (1962–1964), and Subiaco Academy for 11th and 12th grades (1964–1966). Stanford graduated from Subiaco on May 27, 1966. Stanford finished junior high school in Mountain Home. The elder Stanford died after the poet's freshman year at Mountain Home High School.
In 1964, as a junior, Stanford entered Subiaco Academy near Paris, Arkansas, in the Ouachita Mountains. He entered the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville where he started to write poetry, and soon became known throughout the Fayetteville literary community,Wright, C. D. Epilogue, The Singing Knives (Lost Roads,1979). Re: unpublished manuscripts, Wright's epilogue notes the existence of fifty complete manuscripts of poetry, short fiction, screenplays, and essays. and published poetry in the student literary magazine, Preview.Stanford's poetry in three issues. 1) Stokesbury, Leon, ed. Preview. 1968–1969; 2) Stokesbury, Leon, ed. Preview: The Literature. 1970; 3) Stanford, Frank, ed. Preview: Eight Poets. 1971. College of Arts and Sciences, University of Arkansas. Stanford was Associate Editor for the 1970 issue and Editor for the 1971 issue. However, he left the university, never earning a degree.Wright, C. D. "Frank Stanford", The Before Columbus Poetry Anthology. W. W. Norton. 1991.
Career
1969–1972 Over the next several years, Stanford kept writing and in 1971 married Linda Mencin. During this time, Stanford probably worked on The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You — which he had likely begun as a teenager.
In June 1970,Mississippi Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 4, Fall 1971, p. 405. Mississippi State, MS: Mississippi State University. The Hollins Conference on Creative Writing and Cinema took place June 15–28, 1970. he met Irving Broughton, the editor and publisher of Mill Mountain Press, at the Hollins Conference on Creative Writing and Cinema.Broughton, Irv. "Tracing The Tale" (Letters To The Editor), Poets & Writers, September 2002. Broughton read Stanford's work at the conference and agreed to publish the poet's first book, The Singing Knives. Five of Stanford's poems appeared in The Mill Mountain Review later that year,Stanford's poetry in three issues. The Mill Mountain Review, Vol. 1, No. 2; 1970. Vol. 1, No. 3; 1971. Vol. 1, No. 4; 1971. Seattle, WA: Mill Mountain Press. and in 1971, The Singing Knives was published as a limited edition chapbook.Stanford, Frank. The Singing Knives. Seattle, WA: Mill Mountain Press. 1971. . "The Minnow" reprinted here with permission from C. D. Wright, rights holder. Re: publication date, some sources have listed book's publication date as 1972 (such as stated on the copyright page in the 2008 reprint), but book itself lists 1971. That summer, Stanford and Mencin married, but, after having lived together for two years, Mencin left the poet after only three months of marriage.
Stanford spent much of 1972 traveling through the South and New England with Broughton, a communications teacher and filmmaker, and these interviews were published in The Writer's Mind: Interviews With American Authors, a three-volume set.Broughton, Irv, ed. The Writer's Mind: Interviews With American Authors. 3 vols. Fayetteville, Arkansas: University of Arkansas Press. 1989–1990. Stanford briefly lived in New York City, but only, he would later write, "to go to the movies."Stanford, Frank. "Blue Yodel Of The Desperado." Constant Stranger, p 29. Seattle, WA: Mill Mountain Press. 1976. Returning to Arkansas from New York, he moved to the old spa town of Eureka Springs and took a room in the New Orleans Hotel.
1973–1976 For several years, beginning as early as 1970,Stanford worked with R. S. Gwynn at Kemp, Christner & Associates, a land surveying company, in summer 1970. Stanford meagerly supported himself (and his second wife) by working as an unlicensed land surveyor.Father Nicholas Fuhrmann at Subiaco Abbey and Academy by phone on February 15, 2008. Re: his last meeting with Stanford, Fuhrmann remembered it as being approximately ten days before Stanford died, but Stanford was in New Orleans for his last two and a half weeks, so the Stanford/Fuhrmann meeting was probably at least a few weeks before his death. The profession permeated his poetry in numerous instances, as in the poem "Lament Of The Land Surveyor".Stanford, Frank. Arkansas Bench Stone. Seattle, WA: Mill Mountain Press. 1975. Broughton and Stanford made a 25-minute documentary about Stanford's work and life — filmed in Arkansas, Mississippi and Missouri, discussing the land surveyor's experiences, and interviewing friends on whom Stanford's literary characters were sometimes based — titled, It Wasn't A Dream, It Was A Flood, which won one of the Judge's Awards at the 1974 Northwest Film & Video Festival.Bachar, Greg. "It Wasn't A Dream, It Was A Flood: Constant Stranger" , Rain Taxi, Vol. 3, No. 3. Fall 1998.The film includes a recording of Stanford reading his work, his poem, "Linger," from Ladies From Hell (Mill Mountain Press, 1974).
Following the publication of The Singing Knives, Broughton's Mill Mountain Press published five more of Stanford's chapbook-length manuscripts between 1974 and 1976. Ladies From Hell appeared in 1974,Stanford, Frank. Ladies From Hell. Seattle, WA: Mill Mountain Press. 1974. "Death In The Cool Evening" reprinted here with permission from Ginny Stanford, rights holder. followed by Field Talk,Stanford, Frank. Field Talk. Seattle, WA: Mill Mountain Press. 1975. Shade,Stanford, Frank. Shade. Seattle, WA: Mill Mountain Press. Limited Edition. Second Edition. 1975. The publication date of Shade is a source of much confusion. The book's title page notes 1975, the copyright page reads "Copyright 1973, 1975 by Frank Stanford," "Second Edition," and the book's front matter lists "SHADE 1973" under "Books By Frank Stanford." and Arkansas Bench Stone in 1975; all four books included drawings by Ginny Stanford. Constant Stranger, were released the following year.
Returning to Fayetteville in 1975, Stanford reestablished relationships with local area writers and met poet C. D. Wright, a graduate student in the Master of Fine Arts program at the University of Arkansas. The two poets began an affair which would last the rest of Stanford's life.Stanford, Ginny. "Death In The Cool Evening", The Portable Plateau, 1:1. Joplin, Missouri: Ridgerunner Press. 1997; The Alsop Review (reprint). The essay as published in The Portable Plateau differs by two additional sentences and it incorporates Stanford's poem of the same name. In 1976, Stanford rented a house in Fayetteville on Jackson Drive with Wright and established the independent publishing operation Lost Roads Publishers to publish the work of talented poets without ready access to publishing;Wright, C. D. "Finishing The First", Poets & Writers, December 2006. he said that his purpose with the press was to "reclaim the landscape of American poetry."Hall, R. C. "Death Of A Major Voice In Arkansas", The Arkansas Times, December 1978. That fall, the Stanfords moved from Beaver Lake to the Crouch family's farm in southwest Missouri.
1977–1978 In 1977, Stanford's Fayetteville, Arkansas based Lost Roads Publishing Company released its first title, Wright's Room Rented By A Single Woman,DuVal, John. C. D. Wright (1949–), The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History And Culture, November 26, 2007. and more titles soon followed. The press would issue twelve books under Stanford's direction. Early in the year, in an article on Arkansas arts in The New York Times, Stanford's teacher, Jim Whitehead, referred to Stanford as "the most exciting young Arkansas poet he knows."Roy Reed. "Arts in Arkansas: They Make Music, Poetry, Even Movies." The New York Times. February 2, 1977.
The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You
The year 1977 also saw the publication of Stanford's most substantial and influential book, The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You. A joint publication by Mill Mountain Press and Lost Roads (taking up numbers 7–12 in the Lost Roads catalogue), the published version of the epic (which had, at one point, according to Stanford, reached over 1,000 pages and 40,000 lines)Stanford, Frank. "Letter to David Walker", April 1, 1974. The Alsop Review. settled at 542 pages (383 pages in the second, 2000, edition)Stanford, Frank. The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You. Fayetteville, AR: Mill Mountain/Lost Roads nos. 7–12, 1977. . In an April 1974 letter, Stanford comments that poet Alan Dugan had written to him with the response, "This is better than good, it is great ... one day it will explode."
Final months and days By 1978, Stanford was heavily occupied with Lost Roads' publishing endeavors. Father Nicholas Fuhrmann, Stanford's former English teacher and longtime friend, has noted that Stanford was, during this period, visiting his mother (who lived in Subiaco) more often than had seemed usual.
Death