Frank Stanford (born Francis Gildart Smith; August 1, 1948 – June 3, 1978) was an 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 twenties, and three posthumous collections of his writings (as well as a book of selected poems) have also been published. Biography Early life and education Frank Stanford was born Francis Gildart Smith on August 1, 1948, to widow Dorothy Margaret Smith at the Emery Memorial Home in Richton, Mississippi. He was soon adopted by a single divorcee named Dorothy Gilbert Alter (1911–2000), who was Firestone's first female manager. In 1952, Gilbert married successful Memphis levee engineer Albert Franklin Stanford (1884–1963), who subsequently also adopted "Frankie" and his younger, adoptive sister, "Ruthie" (Bettina Ruth). Stanford attended Sherwood Elementary School and Sherwood Junior High School in Memphis until 1961 when the family moved to Mountain Home, Arkansas, following A. F. Stanford's retirement; Stanford finished junior high school in Mountain Home. The elder Stanford died after the poet's freshman year at Mountain Home High School. In 1964, as a junior, Stanford entered Subiaco Academy near Paris, Arkansas, in the Ouachita Mountains. He entered the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville where he started to write poetry, and soon became known throughout the Fayetteville literary community, and published poetry in the student literary magazine, Preview. However, he left the university, never earning a degree. Career 1969–1972 Over the next several years, Stanford kept writing and in 1971 married Linda Mencin. Stanford probably worked on The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You — which he had likely begun as a teenager. In June 1970, he met Irving Broughton, the editor and publisher of Mill Mountain Press, at the Hollins Conference on Creative Writing and Cinema. Broughton read Stanford's work at the conference and agreed to publish the poet's first book, The Singing Knives. Five of Stanford's poems appeared in The Mill Mountain Review later that year, and in 1971, The Singing Knives was published as a limited edition chapbook. That summer, Stanford and Mencin married, but, after having lived together for two years, Mencin left the poet after only three months of marriage. Stanford spent much of 1972 traveling through the South and New England with Broughton, a communications teacher and filmmaker,