A P Walton Editor

"As John Lee Hooker would put it, Born in Mississippi, Raised up in Tennessee—I would add, Come Into My Own in Arkansas." Thus did Frank Stanford (1948–78) describe his life less than two years before he died. Largely unrecognized by the poetic establishment, Stanford was a prolific poet with admirers ranging from Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti to Alan Dugan and Eileen Myles. Although disciplined about his writing, he lived hard and fast, balancing marriages, affairs, alcohol, financial struggles, and mental health issues until he no longer could.

James McWilliams is the author of The Life and Poetry of Frank Stanford. His writing has appeared in Oxford American, Virginia Quarterly Review, Harper's Magazine, and The Paris Review. A winner of the Hiett Prize in the Humanities, he is professor of history at Texas State University.

A. P. Walton, a poet, studied literature at Lund University, where he authored a seminal thesis on Frank Stanford. He is the editor of Letters of a Poet Dying (2026), the first-ever edition of Stanford's selected letters.