Hidden Water: From the Frank Stanford Archives

"It is astounding to me that I was not even aware of this accomplished and moving poet. There is a great deal of pain on the poems, but it is a pain that makes sense, a tragic pain whose meaning rises from the way the poems are so firmly molded and formed from within."—James Wright.Hidden Water is an addition to Copper Canyon's definitive collection What About This. Featuring unpublished and uncollected works, never before published correspondences between Stanford and poet Alan Dugan, and extremely rare audio of Stanford reading, Hidden Water is a must for any lover of Stanford, poetry, and the imagination.My wallet was thick as the bible I carried aroundGraphs of Elvis Presley John Lee Hooker Brigitte Bardot and the sodbusterI thought up nom-de-plumes in the outhouse and sent off Burnsfor things cryptic ads I used stamps that made the postmaster ask where I was fromIs it too bold to say that Stanford will soon be recognized as one of the important voices in American literature and pop culture?Born in 1948, Frank 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. Stanford died in 1978. He authored over ten books of poetry, including eight volumes in the last seven years of his life.