#frank stanford

This is the aim of C.D. Wright’s One Big Self, an incredible book of poetry that also functions as a sort of investigative journalism. In some ways, I read this book before I was ready to read this book; in others, I read this book exactly when I needed.

It was difficult to hear of Wright’s passing yesterday. She was legendary in my home state of Arkansas, which was her birth state and where she studied. What Arkansas poet was not moved by her work? By Lost Roads or Frank Stanford, to both of which she is inextricably tied?

Sitting with her words and the thought of her absence this morning /  a few lines from One Big Self:

“All you posses is your soul whose mold you already deformed.”

“An eye for an eye          it says in Exodus / Whose eye?”

“The air is foul. The dirt is gumbo. Avoid all physical contact. Come nightfall the bugs will carry you off.”

“No condoms for the heart”

“Perhaps Cain’s epic is a prime example of the sort of necropastoral that McSweeney has described. Perhaps it is a poem thoughtfully spreading its poisons (i.e. ‘this is my screw being yanked from decades of paint / this is my poisonous poem which lives in the lead’). The long, intricate after, the microbial livelihood that makes a necropastoral possible. Kids of the Black Hole feels like something we shouldn’t be allowed to read. There were times when I felt as if I couldn’t continue reading. It feels like a ‘homestead beyond the clouds.’ It feels like something ‘shocked back to life.’ I honestly haven’t felt this affected by a book—by a poem—in a very long time.”

Read my entire review of Cain’s debut book [here]