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October 17, 2005
The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You
Frank Stanford’s poem The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You is a 15,000 line monstrosity composed by the southern author when he was nineteen years old. It has no punctuation and is one continuous stanza. It has some junk lines now and again, but those come when someone exercises no restraint and simply pours their soul onto paper. The poem wasn’t published until after Stanford’s suicide in 1978 at the age of 29, and sadly it and most of his other work is out of print which is why I felt compelled to share this with you. Here are the first 40 lines (the first page) of The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You:
tonight the gars on the trees are swords in the hands of knights
the stars are like twenty-seven dancing russians and the wind
is I am waving goodbye to the casket of my first mammy
well that black cadillac drove right up to your front door
and the chauffer was death
he knocked on the screen he said come on woman let’s take a ride
he didn’t even give you time to spit he didn’t even let you
take the iron out of your hair
you said his fingernails was made out of water moccasin bones
and his teeth was hollow he was a eggsucker
you said he reached up under your dress and got the nation sack
you said the conjure didn’t work he didn’t smell the salt in your shoes
you said he came looking for you and you hid out in the out house you waited
for him with a butcher knife you asked him why not
let the good times roll
you wasn’t studying about kicking no bucket
his tongue was a rattlesnake those sunglasses death wore
I was talking to the pew of deacons they had white gloves on
a midget collected ears on a piece of bob wire
the black dog lifted his leg on the hubcap
the wagon load of boots and banners was dumped in the bayou
the chain gang drowned together in the flood
the disguised butterfly
the quivering masts when the hero returns
one came on horseback with the enchanted sword in the hands of the father
the magician comes into the grand court and his head is lopped off by the boy
so the father comes back and knights his son with three strokes on the shoulder
this was the accolade of noblemen the investiture by the magical father
the bridge burnt up the tent and the ladder and the piano are on fire I saw them
after the funeral a drunk peckerhead pulled a pistol on daddy
mother had a double bit axe just in case but daddy kicked his teeth in
if his head was cut off it wouldn’t grow back he wasn’t a knight he was trash
the pecker had cooties
a blind fisherman used clorox jugs he use to be Mama Covoe’s man
he gets snuff on the harp I play it like when I kiss her on the lips
and she is dipping snuff she is dead
to put it out they rolled it down the bank the night crawlers
the honkytonky is burning
the piano under the water looks like a shark
O.Z. stuck a ice pick in his knee
So there are lines 1 – 40 of 15,280. If you'd like to get a published copy of this poem it might be a little difficult. The last time it was published was in fall of 2000 by Lost Roads Publishers, Stanford's own fledgling press that was kept afloat by his second wife, the painter and photographer Ginny Stanford, after his death. I think they may have put out some new copies recently so check here if you're interested. And visit The Frank Stanford Index for more poems and biographical information.
Frank Stanford
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONSTANT STRANGER
by Greg Bachar
"Really, I visualize the dead as well as the living. I visualize you who I will never know. We are constant strangers. I imagine you, I stare at you when I write."
Frank Stanford is a writer whose work and legacy now sit dangerously close to the edge of oblivion. Of the 11 volumes of his work that were published both during his lifetime and after his death, only two are in print today: a collection of short fiction, Conditions Uncertain & Likely to Pass Away, and a slim volume of selected poems issued in 1991, The Light the Dead See. The rest of his books are "widely unavailable," which might lead some to believe that his work is neither important nor deserving of a larger audience. Among poets and writers who have discovered Frank Stanford's work, though, just the opposite is true, as they have kept his writing alive by tracking down and sharing the rare volumes of his poetry, volumes that actually represent only a portion of the manuscripts he put together during his lifetime. For many who stumble upon Stanford's words for the first time, there is a mixture of responses--inspiration at the scope and magnitude of his work; curiosity to know more about his life; and frustration with the fact that the thousands of pages of poems, stories, essays, film scripts, and letters that make up his literary estate have, for the most part, languished in the 20 years that have passed since his death.
On June 3, 1978, Frank Stanford committed suicide by shooting himself three times in the heart with a 22-caliber pistol. He was 29 years old. His death left an indelible absence felt to this day by those who knew him, and the body of work he left behind makes his passing seem even more poignant to those of us who can only know him through his writing. The perpetuation of a Stanford "mystique," in some circles, has allowed his life and work to take on an almost mythic quality. Caused by the tendency of some critics to mistakenly point to his death as a way of understanding his writing, and by the steady disappearance of his books, this mystique has disguised the fact that, in his lifetime, Stanford was an active participant in nearly every aspect of his chosen craft (writing, publishing, speaking on his aesthetic ideas in interviews and correspondence). The Stanford mystique also does not acknowledge the fact that he did not die an unknown poet--much of what he wrote was published while he was alive by editors who recognized his talent. In addition to poetry, Stanford also wrote short fiction over the course of his life, and translated poems by Vallejo, Bertolucci, Pasolini, Follain, and Parra. If one considers the fact that there exists today, in his literary estate and the private collections of those he knew, a treasure trove of unpublished work, it becomes obvious that Frank Stanford's legacy deserves to be championed by those who would like nothing more than to see his work back in print.
Although much of the published criticism and analysis of Frank Stanford's work has been positive, some of it has wrongly suggested that his early death prevented him from finding his true writing voice and that, as a result, his work is undeveloped and immature. Nothing could be further from the truth. A close reading of his available writing--poetry, letters, fiction, and essays--reveals the presence of a confident, original voice and a personal aesthetic that was not only limited to literature, but also incorporated a deep understanding of painting, music, philosophy, and cinema. It Wasn't A Dream, It Was A Flood, a documentary made about Stanford in 1974 by him and his publisher Irv Broughton,won an award for experimental filmmaking at the Northwest Film & Video Festival. It shows a charismatic writer with a haunting voice in full control of both a flair for the dramatic and the great depth of seriousness that is at the core of much of his writing. We can only speculate as to what might have come from Stanford's imagination had he survived the demons that led him to an early exit from this world.
In an essay titled "With the Approach of the Oak the Axeman Quakes," Frank Stanford wrote: "When the poet is young he tries to satisfy himself with many poems in one night. Later the poet spends many a night trying to satisfy the one poem. My poetry is no longer on a journey, it has arrived at its place." One hopes that this statement might one day be fulfilled with a Collected Works of Frank Stanford on the shelves of bookstores and in the hands of readers who might be moved or inspired by the words he left behind.
[Raintaxi]
| By Joshua Daniels | 10:21 AM
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