The University of Arkansas Press is pleased to announce the forthcoming publication of the third, authoritative edition of Frank Stanford’s The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You.
The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You is a Southern Gothic epic unlike any other: more than 15,000 lines, published posthumously in 1978 by Mill Mountain Press and Stanford’s own Lost Roads Publishers, this poem unfolds without stanza breaks or punctuation, creating a relentless linguistic flow that mirrors the chaos and beauty it depicts. In this third, authoritative, edition meticulously restored and introduced by James McWilliams and A. P. Walton, Stanford’s sprawling vision is revived not as a lost relic but as a work fiercely alive in its ethical and aesthetic extremes.
Composed over many years, beginning in his teens, Stanford transformed fragments into a colossal, labyrinthine poem capturing the terrains of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas in the 1960s. It blends vernacular speech and dream logic, creating a mythic landscape inhabited by Francis, a twelve-year-old protagonist part orphan, part seer, part street hustler, who navigates racial injustice, cinematic visions, and historical collisions with unflinching poetic force, wandering through myth and memory, and armed with a poet’s ear and a trickster’s tongue.
A one-of-a-kind, outlaw epic, The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You has lived in literary shadows for half a century, whispered about in poetry circles, passed hand-to-hand as a cult artifact. Now, in this third edition, Stanford’s visionary masterpiece returns with the editorial precision and contextual care it deserves.
The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You will be published in Spring 2026.