Frank Stanford - Legacy

Legacy

Frank Stanford's legacy is one shrouded in (and perhaps tainted by) legend, mystification, and inaccuracies. Stanford frequently embellished his letters and personal anecdotes, and numerous misprints rampant throughout published articles and essays have confused even the most elemental details, hindering potential for critical scholarship. For example, a 2002 misprint in Poets & Writers credits Stanford, not Broughton, as the founder of Mill Mountain Press. Even Stanford's very books have printed biographical and bibliographical errors; for instance, the biographical note for the posthumously published book, Crib Death, states that Stanford was "born in 1949 in Greenville, Mississippi," when in fact he was born in 1948 in Richton, Mississippi, some 240 miles (390 km) away, and the table of contents for The Light The Dead See: Selected Poems of Frank Stanford lists The Singing Knives as having been published in 1972 and Crib Death as having been published in 1979, when in fact they were published in 1971 and 1978, respectively. It should be noted, though, that many inaccuracies surrounding Stanford's legacy are result of Stanford's own self-mythology, his own fabrications.