Third Man Books is very proud to announce pre-sales for our third title, Hidden Water: From the Frank Stanford Archives. Stanford is a personal favorite of many at Third Man Books, and this title has been an endeavor taken on with a special touch. The book features unpublished poems, drafts, letters, and the first publicly heard AUDIO RECORDING of Stanford reciting. The recording will be made available on the book’s street date of July 21.

“The big event in poetry for 2015 will likely be the long-awaited resurrection of Frank Stanford, a legendary badass from Arkansas, much of whose poetry has been unavailable since his suicide at the age of 29 in 1978... Stanford was a hell of a metaphor-maker and simile-slinger, and could cast a spell of extreme intensity with a flick of his wrist.”—NPR.org

"His love poems can sound like the cry of an angel falling backward through an open window, to borrow Dwight Yoakam’s line about Roy Orbison’s voice... Mr. Stanford could lose his heart without blowing his cool.”—New York Times, 2015

"...It is astounding to me that I was not even aware of this accomplished and moving poet. There is a great deal of pain on the poems, but it is a pain that makes sense, a tragic pain whose meaning rises from the way the poems are so firmly molded and formed from within."—James Wright.

Edited by Michael Wiegers and Chet Weise, Hidden Water: From the Frank Stanford Archives is a collection of unpublished poems, drafts, never before seen photos, and correspondences between Stanford, Allen Ginsberg, Pulitzer Prize winning poet Alan Dugan, and more. Copper Canyon Press and Third Man Books have collaborated to make Hidden Water not only a must have book on its own, but a must have complement to Copper Canyon's definitive Stanford collection What About This.

In addition to Hidden Water being made available as a stand alone title, we are offering a Hidden Water Special Edition featuring two books of Frank Stanford’s work: Third Man Books own Hidden Water is bundled in a custom slipcase with the 764 page hardcover title What About This published by Copper Canyon Press. Also included are two framable broadsides featuring poems and artwork by Stanford, and, to top it off, a reproduction of Stanford’s own notepad. Pre-order the Special Edition HERE.

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.

Pre-order your specially priced regular edition of Hidden Water HERE.