book data
91 ratings, 4.76 average rating, 14 reviews
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published
1977
by Lost Roads Pub. Co
binding
Unknown Binding, 542 pages
isbn
0918786126
(isbn13: 9780918786128)
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 160)
Read in January, 1989
This book used to be very hard to find ( I think it's easier now), but is completely amazing. It's a 542 page poem, but don't let that put you off. Some says it's the Great American Novel, even tho' it's a poem, and in many ways, it completely beats On The Road. The JK book is not a good reference point. TBWTMSILY is visionary swamp narrative... Maybe Huckleberry Finn, William Blake, plus Ulysses, set in the Mississippi Delta, not like Faulkner tho'... Stanford's writing is as powerful as Wait...more
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This is the sort of poetry we need in high schools, not that those older won't also LOVE IT, I'm just saying THIS is the kind of poetry that can open kids up to poetry! And keep them open! It never lags, it's a constant whiplash!
CAConrad
http://CAConrad.blogspot.com
....
CAConrad
http://CAConrad.blogspot.com
....
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Read in October, 2004
Hands down the best American book of the 20th century. A bold claim I know, but I stand by it. There's a great little essay on Frank Standford at Alsop Review "It was Lorca who noted that poets have to be able to use the image to fuse details of the infinitesimally small with astronomic intuitions."
By the way if you go to buy this, don't do it through Amazon, way way too expensive. ...more
By the way if you go to buy this, don't do it through Amazon, way way too expensive. ...more
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Read in April, 2002
I would be open to the argument that this epic poem can be read like a novel. It has a plot like the Iliad or the Aeneid for example, but then the language is interesting coming from Stanford who was adopted and yet sort of documents a genuinely southern story--the psychic emotional truth of Stanford's childhood. It has some fascinating grotesque qualities like the world's smallest man. You have to read it to believe. Stanford was an accomplished poet, but in this work he's a maximalist!
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"because none of you know what you want follow me
because I’m not going anywhere
I’ll just bleed so the stars can have something dark
to shine in
look at my legs I am the Nijinsky of dreams"
---
IRV BROUGHTON: What does the river mean to you?
FRANK STANFORD: The river is like a travellng friend who keeps going. You remember them and you forget them, but they just keep passing on. They are always strangers and always friends, and that's the way the river is
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He's a great writer and I love his selected, but this is one long poem, and I don't do too well with epics. I got maybe halfway through it and occasioanlly I'll just open to a random place and read a few pages. Blame the 3 stars on my own limitations as a reader.
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Read in January, 2008
recommends it for:
Poets open to form and experimenting. Language enthusiasts
Truly phenomenal and completely unhinged from the necessities of critical infestation/inspection. A gnarly entanglement worth every sigh and slop of jagged-toothed tilt of prose. I am so charged to have it around for the dipping.
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recommends it for:
everyone
some of the most beautiful poetry i have ever read, so very sad that Stanford did not live on to write more, his portraits of the South show his sensitivity and perhaps hint at his pending suicide, intense.
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Read in January, 2007
This is rough around the edges, but this is a poetry with images that are truly amazing, hence five stars.
An example: "I'll just bleed so the stars will have something dark to shine in."
An example: "I'll just bleed so the stars will have something dark to shine in."
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Read in October, 2007
a 380 pg. poem. wild stuff. if you want something to
rock your world...this might do it.
rock your world...this might do it.
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Read in January, 1991
I can't believe nobody's reviewed this. It's like the best book ever written.
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I want to build a house out of this book and live in it forever.
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