The shoddy treatment of Frank Stanford by The Alsop Review

Fall 2008 issue of Rain Taxi

The only issue in the decade of it's history featuring a portrait as the cover

Portrait by Ginny Stanford

Anyone who may have picked up the latest issue of Rain Taxi may have experienced shivers of excitement upon reading "...Crib Death, as well as the five chapbooks published by Irv Broughton's Mill Mountain Press between 1974 and 1976, are available online at The Alsop Review..." When the reader goes to Alsop Review's site : http://www.journal.alsopreview.com/ one will more than likely be confused and will grab the Rain Taxi issue checking they typed the correct name into their search engine. Are you certain it's Alsop and not Aesop? Can one expect to find a link to the current issue of Rain Taxi? No. Even a note, even a single line mentioning the honor given to them? Negative. What about any information on the Frank Stanford festival last month in Fayetteville? Don't count on it. By all accounts, anyone who might not know better The Alsop Review has nothing whatsoever to do with Frank Stanford. On the side of the page that says "Poets S-Z" one would check in vain for Stanford's name. You have to use the search button within the site to pull up the Frank Stanford page, which is: http://www.alsopreview.com/thecollections/stanford/stanford.html

This brings me to another indignation over The Alsop Review. After the picture of Stanford, a brief biographical description, one comes to the links. They read in order: Poetry, An Arkansas Album. Photographs by Ginny Stanford & Essays & Letters. When you have the honor of carring five chapbooks and a full volume (I counted 119 poems, taking into consideration the few redundancies between the chapbooks and Crib Death the number is around 115) by one of the most scandalously neglected American poets and the link simply states "poetry"...well that has to be one of the biggest understatements I have ever chanced upon in relation to poetry online. One must keep in mind the fact that there are currently only four Stanford books in print: "The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You," "The Singing Knives," ""You" & "The Light the Dead See." The 1975 short film on Stanford It Wasn't a Dream: It Was a Flood has never been made available, why isn't this online? Obviously one waits and prays for it to eventually find its way onto DVD. Why not release it on DVD and sell it along with his books? There is now more interest gathering in Stanford's work that it could very well be sold as a stand alone product. One can also well imagine it on PENNSound, youtube, any number of places..

Here is a breakdown of what exactly Alsop's Stanford site contains:

1) As noted above there are five chapbooks and one posthumously published volume. Approximately 115 poems.

2) Ginny Stanford's wonderful photographs of her husband and their friends-33.

3) The Essays and Letters section: 29.

Why was The Alsop Review entrusted with these works? One cannot help but be pessimistic in the stability of a site that so poorly treats its treasures. I know that I won't be too surprised if when clicking the link in the future I come up with only an error message.

Here are a few more sites carrying Stanford materials:

1) Three articles from Rain Taxi 1998: http://www.raintaxi.com/online/1998fall/stanford.shtml

2) Profile of Lost Roads Press: http://www.raintaxi.com/online/1998fall/lostroads.shtml

3) Ben Ehrenreich's article: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/feature.html?id=181083

4) Poetry Foundation (31 poems): http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=98306

5) Lorenzo Thomas article: http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/thomas/thomas_stanford.html

6) Bill Willett, close friend of Stanford, reads "Singing Knives":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sgm-tju0ad8