Frank Stanford: In Leenus Orth’s Words
The following three questions are excerpts from Constant Stranger: After Frank Stanford (Foundlings Press 2018). This transcribed conversation took place on April 2015, near St. Benedict’s Cemetery at Subiaco, Arkansas.
Little rocks, dry, orange mud, and pine needles framed the footstone. I walked across a field of fescue grass that dipped down and to the left. The Ouachita Mountain lands overlooking farms, forests, and Subiaco Academy cut into the horizon behind me. When I stepped far enough into the field I could see a catfish pond’s muddy waters and the dock where I was supposed to meet him, Leenus Orth, an eighty-nine year old Benedictine monk who, some have said, had more influence on the late poet Frank Stanford than anyone else, living or dead.
Orth sat on one of two red chairs nailed to the dock. His back was to me. He looked into the blonde-green water, rippling with light. He wore a black polo shirt. His broad shoulders kept level, his head of white hair tousled. He didn’t hear me approach as I walked up and sat on the red chair to his left.
Orth’s old tree trunk legs bent at their knees angled outward over his wide feet, sporting black New Balance shoes and white socks under a pair of black slacks. We were old friends before we even shook hands and introduced ourselves. He asked about the origins of my name. I told him. He quickly understood me then. We traded stories of Tennessee and Arkansas, wrestling and boxing, growing old and dying, before I asked questions…
“When’d you meet Frank Stanford?” I asked.
“I first met Frank in Mountain Home when he was about thirteen. He lived with his mother, Dorothy Gildart Stanford, and stepfather-Stanford on Mallard Point, a jutting peninsula on Lake Norfork, Mountain Home. He worked that summer on a boat dock. Since I was asked to teach water skiing, I figured it might be wise to know how to ski myself! After Monday Mass I went down to the dock and there I got a shock: The thirteen year-old was the ski instructor!” Orth hollered and smacked one of his thighs.
He fell back into the memory, “‘Just get your skis on top of the water and hang onto the rope,’ the boy-Stanford said as he helped me put on a pair for the first time. ‘I will pull until you stay on, ya hear, just stay on!’”
Leenus Orth paused.
He started back, “Using his mother’s deck boat, he pushed the throttle fast forward. I popped up like a cork coming out of a champagne bottle. The only trouble, my legs were heading in different directions and whipping up water like an old geyser!”
We heard a splash. A wasp went by my eyelids.
Orth resumed, “While this battle for survival shuddered behind the boat, Frank seemed more concerned with tuning a radio with what came to me over the wind and water, sounded like Elvis Presley, the King of Rock, also with roots in Mississippi! Sheer power of my legs, only about twenty-eight years old, the same age, about, Frank’s death took place, stubbornly refused to surrender. By the time Frank glanced back I got my legs close to me and, while I looked more like a porpoise cutting through the water, I was up. Apparently satisfied, Frank made a long turn and headed back to the dock. When I finally crawled back onto the dock, Frank said, ‘You got up. That will be five dollars!’”
“Comedian!” I hooted.
“Hard to tell in pictures, Leenus, but how did Frank look? Was he tall, was he short?” I asked.
“I’m about 5’11, and I looked down at him. Frank, I would estimate at 5’7 or 5’8 to maybe 5’10. He was naturally strong. His weight lifting and his karate made him look formidable. Lou Trusty, who knew Frank and Dorothy, said all the girls called Frank a ‘hunk.’”
“Hunky-Frank,” I laughed, “How about the girls in the poem about the picture show in downtown Memphis, they spooked him, didn’t they?”
“Mhmm, yes, he’s describing girls from a private school. They have on long socks, tweed skirts, blue weskits, with the colors of God and their school sewn in their berets, moving in one direction like does to clover,” he recited, loosely, a few lines from Stanford’s “The Picture Show Next Door To The Stamp Store In Downtown Memphis.”
“In the poem, the hunter-Frank got so nervous that his money and his hand were in the machine, the cup didn’t come down but the ice and the cola did. The girls were making their debut in the poetry. The nun is on her toes in the poem. The Benedictine nuns stayed on their toes when the St. Scholastica Academy girls and the Subiaco Academy boys had their dances. Frank was a young Byron, a handsome fella.”
“How about during Vietnam, how do you remember Frank in relation to that war?” I asked.
“I remember a story about three Subiaco Academy boys: Frank, Jim Limbird, and Joe Saunders. To begin with, Father Stephen and I were at the Razorbacks vs. Longhorns football game, each team undefeated. The Vietnam War withered on with increasingly disastrous consequences. At least a hundred college students protested the war on a hillside across from the Razorback’s stadium. President Nixon helicoptered in about midway through the first quarter for the game. At the University of Arkansas there is a tree that students climb whenever they protest something. Joe climbed the tree. Frank and Jim, the best boxer I had at the time, stood beneath the tree.
“Some rednecks came, looking for a fight, wanting to kick Joe off the Tree of Enlightenment. They approached and cussed Frank and Jim. Joe told me all this. From the tree, he watched Frank and Jim land eight or nine punches before the rednecks ran off, maybe to get the secret service.”
Read Leenus Orth’s dialogue about Frank Stanford in its entirety, along with a diverse selection of other writings, in Constant Stranger: After Frank Stanford.
Related links:
Frank Stanford: In His Own Words
The Art Of Imitation In Poetry Between Pablo Neruda & Frank Stanford
Frank Stanford Chapbook Assignment
Frank Stanford’s The Battle Field Where The Moon Says I Love You Notes
Frank Stanford’s The Battle Field Where The Moon Says I Love You Outline
Conversation About The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You Pt. 1
Conversation About The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You Pt. 2
