The big event in poetry for 2015 will likely be the long-awaited resurrection of Frank Stanford, a legendary badass from Arkansas, much of whose poetry has been unavailable since his suicide at the age of 29 in 1978
Stanford was a hell of a metaphor-maker and simile-slinger, and could cast a spell of extreme intensity with a flick of his wrist.”NPR.org
His love poems can sound like the cry of an angel falling backward through an open window, to borrow Dwight Yoakam’s line about Roy Orbison’s voice. . . . Mr. Stanford could lose his heart without blowing his cool.” New York Times
It is astounding to me that I was not even aware of this accomplished and moving poet. There is a great deal of pain on the poems, but it is a pain that makes sense, a tragic pain whose meaning rises from the way the poems are so firmly molded and formed from within.James Wright
Hidden Water: From the Frank Stanford
