Within a decade of her death in 1987, each of Ann Stanford's ten books had slipped out of print and her final manuscript-completed just before she died-remained unpublished. Through the effort of two former students, this creeping silence will finally end with the publication of this major selected poems. Like her fellow Californians Robinson Jeffers and Gary Snyder, Stanford's poems are consumed by natural landscape and lost nature. Yet she is an urban poet, a poet of Los Angeles who published poetry, criticism, a translation of "The Bhagavad Gita," and the first major anthology of women's poetry.Listening to Color"Now that blue has had its sayhas told its winds, wall, sicksky even, I can listen to white""sweet poison flowers hedge autumn under a sky white at the edgeslike faded paper. My message keeps""turning to yellow where few leavesset up first fires over branchestips of flames only, nothing here finished yet.""All she knows, though it's awesome, doesn't clog her spontaneity or impede the freshness of her senses. The whole book is brave and good."-May Swenson"Crystalline would be the word for the illuminating clarity of Ann Stanford's poetry-except that hers is not an inorganic but a living crystal. Few poets today better exemplify the criteria of wholeness, harmony, and radiance that the great philosopher said all art should possess. Hers is an intimate but luminous vitality."-Kenneth Rexroth"She is one of our best lyricists."-James DickeyAnn Stanford (1916-1987) lived her whole life in Southern California. With degrees from Stanford and U.C.L.A., she taught at California State University for twenty-five years. Her books were published by Viking and the influential Swallow Press, and her poems appeared regularly in "The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, "and many other magazines.Holding Our OwnA summer without passionour selves pulled togetherlike the leaves surrounding the brancheseach branch part of the treethe tree round, holding its own in the air.The music beginsround globes of soundweld it togethe