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.

Search Party

by Frank Stanford

All lovers listen and sleep, turn back
In your dream before it’s too late.
The water’s up and the hills are steep,
Christ is not alive but the she-blood is.
Slow down and swerve to miss her.
The ground is easy to dig
And the sun will rot you fast.
Your passion is blue and white
Like the eyes of a child in the last hours,

People on couch
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