frank stanford literary festival -- fayetteville, arkansas

the editors at TYPO magazine have organized a literary festival celebrating the work of the great american poet frank stanford, most known for his epric 'the battlefield where the moon says i love you'. the festival will last through this weekend (16th-19th) and will feature readings by local poets, panel discussions on stanford's life, and even the screening of irv broughton's biopoc on stanford, It Wasn't A Dream, It Was A Flood which won the 1975 west coast film festival's best experimental film award. the film will be introduced by broughton himself and then to top it off, there will be a marathon reading of stanford's 'the battlefield' from 7 pm - 7 am, which i think i will try and stay up for can't go to because i have to work.

more information on the festival here and here.

here is an interview with TYPO editor and festival organizer Matt Henriksen, whose character i largely evaluate as 'good' based on my experience with the speediness and courteousness of his return e-mails.

here is a condensed version of stanford's biography that i got from here:

In 1974 he married the painter Ginny Crouch and they moved to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, where Stanford worked as a land surveyor. Stanford returned to Fayetteville in 1975 and lived with the poet C.D. Wright. He founded Lost Roads Publishers and continued to earn a living as a land surveyor. Between 1971 and 1977, seven volumes of his poetry were published including.

At the age of 29, on June 3, 1978, Frank Stanford died of self-inflicted gunshot wounds. Of the over ten collections of Stanford's poetry once in print, only two are available today. Stanford's powerful imagination has been praised and elegized by many poets including Thomas Lux, James Dickey, and Franz Wright.

it surprised me to find out that one of the editors from typo is actually from fayetteville and it also surprised me even to think that there were any kind of legitimate poetry readings in my area. i should really get out of siloam more and i would too if it weren't so goddamn cozy here. i think this gives me more incentive to submit to typo in the future. i don't know why. yes i do.

i think maybe i will feel like stanford will somehow 'typify' arkansas for me. then i won't have to romanticize it so much in order to live here. i don't even know all of arkansas. i hear farther south they have alligators. in any case i consider this my courting or frank stanford. hopefully in the end i won't end up crying in my car and with a raw weiner or something. then i can set him up as a cardboard literary god and it will be more bearable and lovelier.