The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You. A Marathon Poetry Reading Under a Tent on the Main Green of Brown University (broadside)
Providence: circa 1990. Broadside, measuring 17 x 11 inches. Printed in dark brown ink, numbered 9/100 in pencil. A few soft creases from rolling.
Hand-numbered printed broadside reproducing the sign-up sheet for readers of Frank Stanford’s posthumously published epic poem, The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You, at Brown University on April 20, 1990. The all-night marathon reading began at 7:00 in the evening and concluded at 10:30 the following morning. Participants included Stanford’s partner in the last years of his life, poet C.D. Wright, as well as novelist Michael Ondaatje and poets Forrest Gander, Peter Gizzi, and Diane Thiel. The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You was the lifetime project and final poem completed by Frank Stanford (1948-1978) before his suicide. Comparatively unrecognized at the time of publication, Stanford’s sprawling, unpunctuated epic would become a touchstone for generations of American poets: “I can dream about a dead man’s letter and the five dollar bill in his shoe / I can dream about the ship of blind horsemen / that puts out in your sleep that is rigged by spiders / that has a plank everyone must walk.” A near-fine survival.
Price: $450.00