An Excerpt From Frank Stanford, The Poet

Really, I visualize the dead as well as the living. I visualize you whom I will never know. We are constant strangers. I imagine you, I stare at you when I write. And to think, you will never know, will never hear of those people I can no longer call anonymous. People close to me have said: I don't understand what you are talking about, but I know what you mean...

Poetry sometimes is like going along in a big rig with no one else on the roads, no smoke, no stops by the wayside, going on with no cargo, the radio quiet, only the sound of your own voice trying to get in touch.

I really don't know if poetry can be paraphrased, set to music, or what have you. Maybe so. Many times the poem ends up down on the ground, surrounded by strangers. I believe that the metaphorical imagination can be authenticated by the cinema.

Every two folks have their own way of loving. The poet and the poem know what they like. When a particular kind of loving is adapted, you are getting into a different and strange country.

Now when I was younger, I wrote all the time. I had time to kill. A man has to earn a living; writing has become more special to me. 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.

Then the poet realizes it is midnight, he is alone, and his love is with someone else. What he wanted to sing, what he wanted to mean- someone else has done it. While the poet worried what kind of nails to use, how to fasten down his love, another has hit them on the head and driven them deep...

You know there is no other poet on earth like me. I know there is no other poet on earth like you. We need to be read. This is the theme of poetry, now.

In my early days I was a student of all forms. I learned everything and nothing. I practiced the katas of poetry. I listened the blues. Having the equilibrium of a poet, I kept falling in love. Now I believe content and form are not so much in opposition- as many would have us believe. They are one reality, in appearance as well as essence. If you do not know this, no progressive study of the art will provide you any insights. The poem eats when it is hungry, sleeps when it is tired.

In getting to the reasons for writing a poem, I suppose the poet can call the reader into the woods and lose him, or he can let him find his own way. I would say though, in describing the poem we return to the place of poetry, the poet, and to the poetry itself. 

I don't think it matters how a poet plants his garden; it is the quality of the yield which matters. Just like the stars, there are so many things to be said about poems and their poets. I can say I don't want my work to be obscure or vague- I also must say that sometimes I don't mind this trait in the work of others. I am not content in just suggesting things by the use of words, I want to show the origins, the metaphors of reality, the free movement of the spirit. Poetry is a body, all right, but in spirit it is the function which oftentimes creates the organ.

Jean Cocteau said mystery exists only in precise things- people in their situations, situations in people. Because I believe the visionary life has nothing to do with a necessarily transcendent existence, I like most of the poetry I read. I believe most poets know this is the world; and when you try to lead a special life or write a special poetry, you are dancing with an imaginary partner at a meaningless dance to which you have invited yourself and no one else.

So I think the visionary life is commonplace for the poet, the hair on his head, the the pain in his rotting teeth. And I the think there is a fear of all this good poetry. The spokesmen and spokeswomen of various constituencies of poetry are on their bulldozers, clearing away perimeters around a vast forest of poetry. This is a way of laying claim. You know what happens. They all meet in the center; everyone else is gone.

I don't believe in a tame poetry. When poetry hears its own name, it runs, flies, swims off for fear of its own life. You can bet your boots on that, Jean Cocteau said a poet rarely bothers about poetry. Does a gardener perfume his roses?

Truthfully, it is the lure of the other fields, of other forces which draw me into a poem. Every poet has a field of force not presently understood. If I had the time, I would take him with me somewhere. I would give him another poem to read from one of ten books. The truly confused are good and fair to deal with. Twisted minds are another species of folks.

A carpenter can tell you how a table is made, but can a medium joining hands with us over this table tell us what it is? Hug a tree. 

We go back to the poetry, the poet. I see a figure in the field. There is genuine moonlight shining on his crowbar. He is prying stumps out of his ground. Poetry busts guts.