The Truth

By Frank Stanford 1948–1978 Frank Stanford

Nicanor Parra

I’m not going to lie

Through my teeth to you

Like the poets from Minnesota,

The South, and the West,

And New York City.

Most of all in life

I would like to fuck a thirteen-year-old again,

And I don’t have any hesitations

About saying I’d rather be Marlon Brando

Than I would T. S. Eliot, etc.

I have more respect for Muhammad Ali

Than any other living man.

Of course I’ve tried Esquire,

But my shoes aren’t platforms

And I don’t know shit about canoes.

Although I can’t prove it,

Most poets work for the highway dept.

There are more of them than there are

Flies and engineers.

And I stink like a dead mule under an overpass.

Estate of Frank Stanford © C.D. Wright

Source: Smoking Grapevine (Unpublished Collection, )

Biography

Born in 1948, Stanford was a prolific poet known for his originality and ingenuity. He has been dubbed “a swamprat Rimbaud” by Lorenzo Thomas and “one of the great voices of death” by Franz Wright. He grew up in Mississippi, Tennessee, and then Arkansas, where he lived for most of his life and wrote many of his most powerful poems. He attended the University of Arkansas from 1967-9 and studied engineering while continuing to . . .

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