Letters of a Poet Dying is a watershed publication—the first collection of correspondence by the virtuosic poet Frank Stanford (1948–78). Born in southeast Mississippi, Stanford lived most of his brief life in northern Arkansas, where he studied, loved, founded a publishing company, and wrote prolifically before ending his life at the age of twenty-nine. These strikingly original letters, postcards, and book inscriptions written in Stanford’s twenties to several dozen recipients—poets, editors, friends, lovers, and family members—illuminate his complicated and often tumultuous creative process.

Enhanced by A. P. Walton’s painstaking scholarship, Stanford’s correspondence reveals a poet intent on crafting and shaping his oeuvre as he approached the death he long anticipated. “I have never feared Death,” he wrote in 1972. For him, “Death was always there, a pale master holding the reins of my horse.” Yet these letters are much more than a contemplation of the poet’s own mortality—they demonstrate a lust for life and contain untold moments of beauty, providing intimate, moving glimpses into Stanford’s creativity, aesthetic beliefs, friendships, romances, and fears.

That these letters have survived obscurity for the many decades since the poet’s death is a small miracle. Stanford’s letters offer a clear window into the genius of one of the most gifted and prodigious poets of the twentieth century and stand in their own right as significant works of literature.

The creative flame of poet Frank Stanford burned early and brightly. He published numerous books, including the 15,434-line epic The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You—his posthumous magnum opus and one of the longest poems in American literature. Though Stanford died nearly a half century ago, there is more interest in his life and work today than ever before.   

A. P. Walton, a poet, studied literature at Lund University, where he authored a seminal thesis on Frank Stanford. He is also coeditor of the scholarly edition of Stanford’s The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You.