Thanks for diving into Frank Stanford's battlefield, Patrick! And reporting on your immersion! Great review! I was planning to post an essay on it, though I hardly think I need to, since the proof is in the eating, and you have pointed the way to potential diners.

I think of the poem as built on a systole-diastole rhythm, alternating between soaring surrealistic-rhetorical lyrical expansions and earthy, humorous and/or romantic narratives. It is set in the late 50's-early 60's mainly in the Mississippi delta levee camps, also in Memphis with a little time in New Orleans. The protagonist is 12 year old Francis, a precocious clairvoyant white child. It is readily available now, which it wasn't for many years. Someone described it as Huck Finn written by Andre Breton.

Frank Stanford's epitaph reads, "It wasn't a dream it was a flood."

The Singing Knives is an early book of his, all shorter and longer lyrics, some very strong.

Gail,

This was such a good idea! A badly neglected poet, it seems to me, is Kenneth Allott, who is better known as a critic, but he had an interesting style that was unique to him. A new book of his collected verse, containing new poems of his that never made it into either of his two books, came out, I believe, a few months ago.

I'm sorry to have no quote to give you, but he is well worth looking up.

William Jay Smith, who once did enjoy some fame, I think, for a poem called 'American Primitive' --


London

Temptation, oh, temptation, sang the singers,
And the river passed them by like Banquo's ghost.
Deliver us from evil, and the river;
All are lost.

Salvation, oh, salvation, sang the singers,
And the ribs that rose and fell were barrel staves;
And I saw beyond the mist, the magic circle,
The hungry waves.

The river like a serpent moved among them,
And mingled, as it coiled upon each eye,
The faint, the dark, the scarcely flowing water,
And the quiet sky.

Death-in-Life is on us, cried the people.
Leaves from Birnam Wood are on the wind.
Holy, holy, holy, sang the singers,
All have sinned.

The stars have disappeared above the city
Like jewels from the crown of Banquo's ghost;
And London Bridge is falling, falling, falling,
Scaled, and crossed.

xxx- William Jay Smith

I'm piggybacking again, but here are some links:

Kennth Allott at Old Poetry

Salt's reprint of his Collected

Edna St. Vincent Millay.

One of my favorites. Do you know the poet?

The Toys
MY little Son, who look'd from thoughtful eyes
And moved and spoke in quiet grown-up wise,
Having my law the seventh time disobey'd,
I struck him, and dismiss'd
With hard words and unkiss'd,
—His Mother, who was patient, being dead.
Then, fearing lest his grief should hinder sleep,
I visited his bed,
But found him slumbering deep,
With darken'd eyelids, and their lashes yet
From his late sobbing wet.
And I, with moan,
Kissing away his tears, left others of my own;
For, on a table drawn beside his head,
He had put, within his reach,
A box of counters and a red-vein'd stone,
A piece of glass abraded by the beach,
And six or seven shells,
A bottle with bluebells,
And two French copper coins, ranged there with careful art,
To comfort his sad heart.
So when that night I pray'd
To God, I wept, and said:
Ah, when at last we lie with trancèd breath,
Not vexing Thee in death,
And Thou rememberest of what toys
We made our joys,
How weakly understood
Thy great commanded good,
Then, fatherly not less
Than I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay,
Thou'lt leave Thy wrath, and say,
'I will be sorry for their childishness.'

I know the poem, Sam, and admire it.
So in that sense I would not think it underrated.
Best,
David

'I saw you take his kiss!' ''Tis true.'
'O modesty!' 'T'was strictly kept.
'He thought me asleep; at least I knew
'He thought I thought he thought I slept.'

Great punctuaters, these Victorian guys!

It struck me, reading Sam's recent post, that many of the "underrated" poets would have become "forgotten poets" were it not for the great anthologists.

Without Arthur Quiller-Couch, for example, CP would probably have disappeared among the dust of peripheral pre-raphaelites, only arising occasionally when blown-upon by academics in search of an easy thesis. No P without Q, so to speak.