frank stanford

Coming Spring 2023: A Memoir of Frank Stanford in High School

We’re excited to reveal the first title in our 2023 catalog: “Subiaco’s Unofficial Poet Laureate”: A Memoir of Frank Stanford in High School, by Leo A. Lensing.

Coming Spring 2023

Leo Lensing’s vivid and critical account of the poet Frank Stanford in high school.

Lensing was a classmate of the poet Frank Stanford at Subiaco Academy, a college preparatory school for boys run by Benedictine monks at Subiaco Abbey that towers over the hamlet of Subiaco, Arkansas, near Paris, Arkansas on State Highway 22 between Little Rock and Fort Smith. Stanford transferred to Subiaco from the public high school in Mountain Home, Arkansas, in 1964; he and Lensing graduated on May 27, 1966.

Vivid, critical, and erudite, this memoir draws on archival research, interviews with monks, classmates, and other contemporaries, the growing body of Stanford scholarship, and Lensing’s original close readings of Stanford’s poems. The book illuminates previously unexplored corners of the poet’s adolescence and early development as a writer and a thinker, especially in the context of the Civil Rights Movement and desegregation.

Subiaco’s Unofficial Poet Laureate will be available for pre-order in late winter 2023 and copies will go out in the mail in the spring.

To request a digital review proof, titles for resale or institutional collections, or other information, contact us: publisher[at]foundlingspress.com.

About the Author: Leo A. Lensing

Leo A. Lensing is professor of Film Studies emeritus at Wesleyan University and lives in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. He is a frequent contributor to the Times Literary Supplement and writes occasionally for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. His publications include The Anarchy of the Imagination (1992), a selection of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s essays and interviews, and Arthur Schnitzler’s Träume (2012), a German edition of the Viennese writer’s dream journal.

Constant Stranger: After Frank Stanford Enters Second Printing

Pre-order, pitch in, or help spread the news

One year from its publication on the 40th anniversary of the poet Frank Stanford’s death, the earth-turning anthology Constant Stranger: After Frank Stanford is coming back in a second printing.

Constant Stranger is the result of the incredible generosity and energy of contributors, advisers, donors, and friends. This second print run, however, comes in the middle of our production cycle for several exciting 2020 titles and surprise projects—putting a significant strain on our finances. If you’d like to help our all-volunteer staff share this work with a wider audience, here are a few suggestions:

  • Pre-order Constant Stranger now

  • Forward this news to a friend or listserv

  • Post about us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram

  • Recommend Constant Stranger as a class text to someone teaching a course in poetry or literature

  • Ask your favorite independent bookstore to inquire about stocking copies

  • Ask your university library to acquire a copy

  • Send a tax-deductible donation to Arts Services Initiative of Western New York, earmarked for Foundlings Press

    • A donation of $50 or more will get you a copy of Constant Stranger signed by the editors along with Strays Pack 1 and Pack 2 as soon as they are available.

Praise for Constant Stranger

The diverse voices assembled in Constant Stranger suggest the time is right for common readers to discover this “poet’s poet” as well.

- Leo A. Lensing, The Times Literary Supplement

Constant Stranger offers readers a place to explore and to problematize the wholly unique effects of his poems, and to grapple with the charismatic but flawed poet behind them.

- Jack Christian, Rain Taxi Review

Constant Stranger: After Frank Stanford was released August 1, 2018, celebrated with a small event in Buffalo, NY that month, and officially launched at the second Frank Stanford Literary Festival hosted by Open Mouth in Fayetteville, Arkansas in September 2018.