D.C. Berman reads Frank Stanford

Frank Stanford's "Hidden Water: From The Frank Stanford Archives" is available here: thirdmanstore....
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Poem: Untitled (I bought a ticket to Russia so I could do that dance in the snow) by Frank Stanford
Read by: D.C. Berman
Video by Doug Lehmann
Hidden Water: From the Frank Stanford Archives published by Third Man Books
Born in 1948, Frank Stanford was a prolific poet known for his originality and ingenuity. He has been dubbed "a swamprat Rimbaud" by Lorenzo Thomas and "one of the great voices of death" by Franz Wright. He grew up in Mississippi, Tennessee, and then Arkansas, where he lived for most of his life and wrote many of his most powerful poems. Stanford died in 1978. He authored over ten books of poetry, including eight volumes in the last seven years of his life.
David Berman is an American poet, cartoonist, and singer-songwriter best known for his work with indie-rock band the Silver Jews. He can occasionally be found in Nashville, Tennessee, home of the Titans.
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U N T I T L E D (I BOUGHT A TICKET TO RUSSIA SO I COULD DO THAT DANCE IN THE SNOW)
I bought a ticket to Russia so I could do that dance in the snow
I saw a calf of miasmas run into barbed wire
I saw a child hang himself at a certain angle
So he could see his shadow a thousandfold
When I was seven I wrote a novel of apples and milk
That lamented the passing of a moonlike character one certain Debureau
And his coughing sidekick the Beast of ice
At night I rowed a blue guitar with swords through the bay
I made my way the gills turning pink in my shoes
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Up the fearful symmetry of that stretch of anonymous water
I lent out my broom to the clandestine pollen
I laid my head in the prostitute’s lap
I interpreted the dementia of the cheerleader’s waist
Going to sleep in the dust was my only accomplishment my destiny
Drenched in the garden of slime and mistrusted mystery
I was accused of the odor of vengeance
The only friend I had I could trust froze in the clover
Through the valleys through the shadowy doorways through the merchandise
Of schoolrooms I go luminous a walking disaster
Forever fighting off dribbling flies that smell of mayonnaise and pencils
That whistle like officers of the law
Through the duration I made myself bleed in a gallop
I listened to the noise in the thistle of the dark
I kept moving undiminished and scorched
Holding a light to the egg
Slashed and weaving I pursue the murmuring cinders
I stagger through the familiar juices of the moon
As if I earned my living in a rodeo I ride down each tear
I pierce the ooze with a submerged kiss dug under contempt and despair
I assume the span of the figurehead’s breasts ravished to smithereens
I pass my time in Emily Dickinson’s outhouse
I pace through the dishevelment of the recluse’s lacuna
I scrawl on the mirror and peel oranges in the shepherd boy’s confessional
In the fall of the year I watch the meadows
Shivering like so many sorrel mares in heat
I lurk behind the canvas of the traveling picture show
Smelling of sardine’s Sara Bundy’s boiled coffee
Black is the color of the school marm’s hems pulled up like drapes
I wait my ticket the knife like a Pre-raphaelite suicide
Drunk on the ruined records of Dixie Hummingbirds
The black discs the Negroes sail over the levee
And shoot out of the sky with a hair triggered shotgun