Wes Tirey has intereviewed James McWilliams at High Horse Magazine about writing his acclaimed biograph of Frank Stanford, out now from the University of Arkansas Press.
WT: As much as I’d love to try to ask my questions in prose poem form, I don’t have the chops to pull it off—so I’ll switch to a more straightforward delivery. First of all, congratulations on the publication; this has been a long time coming for the already initiated to the work and world of Frank Stanford. What does Stanford’s work mean to you and how different is your relationship to it after eight years of research?
JM: I first discovered Frank Stanford’s epic poem The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You in 2000, just after Lost Roads published the second edition. Reading it felt like I’d caught a rogue wave during a fever dream in the middle of some mythical ocean, rode it like a banshee until it dumped me in some wayward Delta cotton patch, where I woke up naked and disoriented, panthers and hawks circling. Changed. That’s about the best I can do for telling you what Frank’s work initially meant to me. Over the last two decades, especially during the research and writing of the biography, I’ve recovered some of my balance, knocked the shine off a few Stanfordian myths, and partially demystified the fumarole that fueled Frank’s poetry. But–and this is critical–knowledge has not ruined experience (I’m an historian, and we can make anything boring.). Even though I have probed the depths of Frank’s life and work as much as I can imagine anyone probing into it, reading his poems still transports me back to that ocean. I still lose myself on that crazy ride. The facts of Stanford’s life have done nothing to diminish the magic of the poetry. Perhaps they have enhanced it.