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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.

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I Would Have a Woman
as Real as Death

by Frank Stanford
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pain my star
of all times I remember
none of them
now I do
I notice the points
of light the shoes
the ballerina wore
though years ago
now I do
nothing like
the fish
swims in its sleep
the birds that patrol that dark-

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  • This poem surprised me. It's lucid, luminous & mysterious, & it...

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