Dead Orchard

By Frank Stanford 1948–1978 Frank Stanford

Raymond Radiguet

Like seven birds sleeping on the plateau

Overlooking the shipwreck of love, mystery

Of the drunken visitors wandering off

With your wife, men who talk with a bad accent,

The condemned the abandoned, one day of silence,

Two days of silence, dreams shattered and protected,

The more the blossoms the more you suffer.

Estate of Frank Stanford © C.D. Wright

Source: Automatic Co-Pilot (Unpublished Collection, )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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