Conditions Uncertain and Likely to Pass Away

by Frank Stanford

Fiction. "These are not stories in the contemporary sense, but tales spun out of the mystical and the ordinary, a history of men sizing up other men and bottles being passed around a campfire. ...If death figures here, there is also the dichotomy of images honing in on an inevitable end and a language that is enormously, relentlessly alive"--Silvia Curbelo.

Genres: Poetry, Short Stories

151 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Frank Stanford was a prolific American poet. He is most known for his epic, The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You— a labyrinthine poem without stanzas or punctuation. In addition, Stanford published six shorter books of poetry throughout his 20s, and three posthumous collections of his writings (as well as a book of selected poems) have also been published.

Just shy of his 30th birthday, Stanford died on June 3, 1978 in his home in Fayetteville, Arkansas, the victim of three self-inflicted pistol wounds to the heart. In the three decades since, he has become a cult figure in American letters.

Reviews

[Melting Uncle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Frank Stanford, a writer of crazy imagination, died at age 30 of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. This collection of short stories was published twelve years after his death. The imagery and atmosphere are remarkably haunting, strange, and beautiful. It's bizarre that this writer is not better known and that many of his works were out-of-print for so long. He deserves his own Library of America volume.

Frank Stanford is known primarily as a poet. These stories have in common with his poetry a casual insanity drawn from a seemingly inexhaustible well of Southern gothic surrealism. It's actually shocking how unknown F Stanford is in proportion to how strikingly original and bizarre are the scenes that he conjures. For example, the clitoris of Emily Dickinson in the eye of a buzzard, or a teenager snorting cocaine out of his palm while his pet monkey smells a stranger's toes. It's weird and obscene but also enchanting and dreamlike.

All that said, the two longer (~30 page) stories felt a little unfocused and with excellent parts buried in pages of blurry narrative and hazy characters. Maybe he would have edited them down had he lived to see them published. Still, this writer should be more well known and this book shouldn't be so impossible to find (thank you interlibrary loan.). I look forward to reading The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You.
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After re-reading the story that had confused me the most ("Surtees' Tale", the last one in the book, 30 pgs long) I decided to bump this from four stars up to five. Despite any weakness in the construction of the narrative, these stories deserve more readers. Frank Stanford was a writer of great originality and strangeness. If I had been given this as a teenager I would've been excited about books and writing. Hopefully this comes back into print because the cheapest copy I see for sale online is $125. RIP Frank Stanford.

[John Thomas Allen 2nd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Frank Stanford's prose is uncomfortably lucid while seeming to be far away. The opening of the first story is pretty direct: "When I was just a boy I killed a man dead." He has a decidedly Mexican sensibility to his work. It is mythical while always preserving an acute sense of reality, and his command of imagery makes it seem easy. Everything takes place in this radiant nighttime world, but it is unmistakably our world, and by the time his imagistic mastery manifests itself, you will not have managed to prepare yourself for the sluggish, slow moving crystallization of whatever it is. Great stuff.

[Dearwassily · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this so much more than I did, but some people, I guess, are poets, and some people are short story writers. Stanford was a poet.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scary good. Hard to believe his life was cut short. Destined to become the best American writer people have never heard of. His books are hard to find and copies going mostly to lit programs at edu's. imagery and stories take on a new level of imagination. Sure - some his poems make "space" during a dead show about as main stream as Katy perry, but its worth the read. This collection of stories is amazing.

[in8 · Rating 4 out of 5]

not as good as his poetry, but still great, and insightful into his "real" life perhaps. I talk about it some here:
http://5cense.com/10/turin.htm