My Answer to a Student Who Asked About Frank Stanford’s Titles
A student recently asked me about Frank Stanford’s titles and asked if Stanford made up the title It Wasn’t a Dream: It Was a Flood (1974). She asked the same about The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You (1977). She wanted to know if these were his creations or if he was borrowing from other writers.
I did not have an answer for her right away but her question brought a memory to mind. Back in February 2014, I stopped by Franz and Elizabeth Wright’s apartment in Waltham, MA. Elizabeth said hi and bye before going back to work. I sat across from Franz on a worn, blue sofa. He sat in a black leather armchair, modern looking; Wayne Shorter played from a Bose radio. Franz’s legs were wrapped in a green and blue plaid blanket. He wore a red baseball cap. He said Frank Stanford read poems by his dad, James Wright, back in the day, like, in the late 60s.
In May of 1968, James Wright’s Shall We Gather at the River was published. Stanford would have been twenty-years-old, attending the University of Arkansas, barely clearing a 2.0 GPA. It is easy to imagine twenty-year-old Frank Stanford reading Wright’s poetry, the words and images spinning around his head.
Franz told me Stanford’s title, The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You, was inspired by his dad’s poem “Brush Fire” (from Shall We Gather at the River). The connection is not straightforward like it is when Stanford mimics Jean Follain’s poem “Exile,” but readers can conceive how one poet’s work influences another poet’s work.
Here is James Wright’s “Brush Fire”:
In this field,
Where the small animals ran from a brush fire,
It is a voice
In burned weeds, saying
I love you.
Still, when I go there,
I find only two gray stones,
And, lying between them,
A dead bird the color of slate.
It lies askew in its wings,
Its throat bent back as if at the height of some joy too great
To bear to give.
And the lights are going out
In a farmhouse, evening
Stands, in a gray frock, silent, at the far side
Of a raccoon’s grave.
Is the “field” mentioned in the first line the battlefield in Stanford’s title? The “burned weeds,” “a dead bird,” “a raccoon’s grave” are images of a ravaged landscape.
And is that the moon’s voice saying, “I love you” while “the lights are going out in a farmhouse” and “evening stands in a gray frock”?
I can hear your doubts. I know; it’s a stretch. However, it’s easy to see how Wright’s poetry may have sparked the younger poet’s imagination during his manic writing sessions.
In any case, the memory helped me form an answer to my student’s question about where Stanford got the title for his movie It Wasn’t A Dream: It Was A Flood. I suggested to the student that it is very possible the title was inspired by the children’s rhyme “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.”
As you know, it goes like this:
Row, row, row your boat,
Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.
She laughed, but the connection can be made because, in other instances, Stanford’s lines imitated children’s verse. His title takes the idea that life is a dream and turns it on its head. We are not always “gently” rowing “down the stream” as we go through life; instead, we constantly deal with a flood of emotions, memories, joys, and aches. Maybe I did not help the student very much, but, in the end, the idea I was trying to get across to her was to show how poets and poems speak to each other across time and space.
Stanford shows us it is okay to read or to listen and then imitate or sample, especially as budding writers. Poets add to a rich history before them; they do not necessarily reinvent it.
Relatable Links:
Frank Stanford’s Lament and Some of His Biography with James McWilliams
Smoking Grapevine: Outline and Concordance for The Battlefield
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
Frank Stanford’s The Battle Field Where The Moon Says I Love You Pt. 1
Frank Stanford’s The Battle Field Where The Moon Says I Love You Pt. 2
Frank Stanford: In His Own Words
Frank Stanford: In Leenus Orth’s Words
The Art Of Imitation In Poetry Between Pablo Neruda & Frank Stanford
Frank Stanford Chapbook Assignment
