The Life and Poetry of Frank Stanford

Texas State University history professor McWilliams (Eating Promiscuously) delivers a captivating biography of Frank Stanford, the Arkansas poet and enfant terrible of the Fayetteville literary scene, who died in 1978. As McWilliams notes, Stanford’s physical beauty, sexual appetite, and outsize personality made him the center of attention wherever he went, but it was his prodigious talent, voracious reading, and prolific writing that made him a poet sought after by literary magazines. Stanford dominated the University of Arkansas poetry workshop before retreating to the hills around Fayetteville to work on his magnum opus, The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You. McWilliams does a remarkable job connecting Stanford’s poetry with his personal life, particularly his lifelong friendship with Irv Broughton, owner of a small press and Stanford’s first publisher; his penchant for love triangles; and how his need for connection fueled his poetry. The end of Stanford’s life, which saw him cohabiting with two women in different towns and running an independent press before his death by suicide at age 29, is rendered here in spellbinding detail. It’s a page-turner. (July)