I dreamed I heard somebodySinging in the outhouse—Frank Stanford, “The Singing Knives”
Growing up in the Virginia woods we deprecatingly referred to as “the sticks,” one of my friends had a genuine outhouse in their backyard. Their old farmhouse had been renovated with indoor plumbing, but this mysterious small building remained. Weathered grey wood, a crescent moon carved in the door to let light in, a bench seat with a hole and a wooden lid. It was dim, dusty in the outhouse, and there were daddy longlegs inside.
In reading Frank Stanford’s longish, dreamy, narrative poem “The Singing Knives,” the outhouse lines (as well as lines in the companion, tirade-of-an-adventure poem, “The Snake Doctors”) send me back into childhood. Like history, poetry reminds us that we are barely a breath beyond the…
You're reading a preview of
The American Poetry Review (Digital) - 1 Issue, March/April 2024