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Ginny Crouch Stanford collection of Frank Stanford

 Collection
Call Number: YCAL MSS 1086

Scope and Contents

This collection contains writings, correspondence, notebooks, photographs, artwork, personal papers, audiovisual materials, and other papers by or related to American poet Frank Stanford. Includes material related to painter Ginny Crouch Stanford, including her artwork and correspondence.

Dates

  • 1957-2009

Creator

Conditions Governing Access

This material is open for research.

Boxes 13 and 15 (audiovisual material): Restricted fragile material. Reference copies may be requested. Consult Access Services for further information.

Box 14 (electronic media): Restricted fragile material. Access copies of digital files may be requested. Consult Access Services for further information.

Conditions Governing Use

The Ginny Crouch Stanford Collection of Frank Stanford is the physical property of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Literary rights, including copyright, belong to the authors or their legal heirs and assigns. For further information, consult the appropriate curator.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Purchased from Jeff Maser on the Edwin J. Beinecke Book Fund, 2014.

Arrangement

Organized into seven series: Series I: Writings, 1957 - 1979, Series II: Correspondence, 1970 - 2009, Series III: Personal papers, 1948 - 1998, Series IV: Artwork, 1973 - 1975, Series V: Photographs, 1950 - 1991, Series VI: Audiovisual materials, 1957, 1974, Series VII: Electronic media, undated

Related Materials

Frank Stanford papers (YCAL MSS 295), Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

Extent

6.67 Linear Feet (15 boxes)

Language of Materials

English

Catalog Record

A record for this collection is available in Orbis, the Yale University Library catalog

Persistent URL

https://hdl.handle.net/10079/fa/beinecke.gcstanford

Frank Stanford

Frank Stanford (1948- 1978) was an American poet. He authored over ten books of poetry, including The Singing Knives (1972), Ladies from Hell (1974), Field Talk (1974), Shade (1975), Arkansas Bench Stone (1975), Constant Stranger (1976), The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You (1977), and Crib Death (1978). His posthumous collection, What About This: Collected Poems of Frank Stanford (2015), was a finalist for the National Books Critics Circle Award.

Stanford was born Francis Gildart Smith in Richton, Mississippi. In 1974 he married the painter Ginny Crouch, and they moved to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, where Stanford worked as a land surveyor. In 1975, Stanford began a relationship with poet C. D. Wright which would last the rest of Stanford's life. In 1976, Stanford founded Lost Roads Publishers, an independent literary publisher that produced books of poetry, literary fiction, and translation.

At the age of twenty-nine, on June 3, 1978, Stanford died of self-inflicted gunshot wounds.

Ginny Crouch Stanford is a painter and contributed artwork to accompany many of Stanford's bodies of poetry, including works produced for Mill Mountain Press, Lost Roads Publications and other periodicals. Following Stanford's death, Crouch Stanford, along with C. D. Wright as co-executors of his estate, played instrumental roles in preserving his legacy.

Processing Information

Collections are processed to a variety of levels, depending on the work necessary to make them usable, their perceived research value, the availability of staff, competing priorities, and whether or not further accruals are expected. The library attempts to provide a basic level of preservation and access for all collections, and does more extensive processing of higher priority collections as time and resources permit.

This collection received a basic level of processing, including rehousing and minimal organization.

This finding aid may be updated periodically to account for new acquisitions to the collection and/or revisions in arrangement and description.

Information included in the Content Description note and Collection Contents section is drawn from information supplied with the collection and from an initial survey of the contents. Folder titles appearing in the contents list below are often based on those provided by the creator or previous custodian. Titles have not been verified against the contents of the folders in all cases. Otherwise, folder titles are supplied by staff during initial processing.

Description, including lists of Stanford's works, was provided by Ginny Crouch Stanford at the time of acquisition, and has been repurposed to describe folder contents.

Title
Guide to the Ginny Crouch Stanford Collection of Frank Stanford
Status
Completed
Author
by Jessica Tai
Date
May 2020
Description rules
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language of description note
Finding aid written in English.

Part of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library Repository

Contact:
P. O. Box 208330
New Haven CT 06520-8330 US
(203) 432-2977

Location

121 Wall Street
New Haven, CT 06511

Opening Hours

Access Information

The Beinecke Library is open to all Yale University students and faculty, and visiting researchers whose work requires use of its special collections. You will need to bring appropriate photo ID the first time you register. Beinecke is a non-circulating, closed stack library. Paging is done by library staff during business hours. You can request collection material online at least two business days in advance of your visit, using the request links in Archives at Yale. For more information, please see Planning Your Research Visit and consult the Reading Room Policies prior to visiting the library.