Foundlings Press is pleased to announce the release of a second, expanded edition of Leo Lensing’s sold-out book, Subiaco’s Unofficial Poet Laureate: A Memoir of Frank Stanford in High School, available now at the link below.
This second, expanded edition of Subiaco’s Unofficial Poet Laureate features three additional illustrations and important new information gathered in conversations with two of Frank Stanford’s classmates who had not been reachable before. Bob Schulte, Stanford’s other roommate senior year, remembered details from 1965-1966 that no one else had. Nick Kennedy, a day student who grew up in the town of Subiaco and whose parents owned its only tavern, recalled revealing exchanges with Stanford both during high school and when he came back home to visit his mother and help out at the Academy. Lensing has added more context on the controversies surrounding discussions about racial equality in the Subiaco curriculum along with a chapter on how the young poet was remembered – and mythologized – at the abbey and school in what became his hometown.
Launch Event in Buffalo
We’re celebrating the launch of the second edition with a very special event in Buffalo.
On Saturday, Aug. 2, at 7pm at Fitz Books, Leo Lensing will join James McWilliams, author of The Life and Poetry of Frank Stanford, for a reading and conversation. Together, Leo’s memoir and James’s long-awaited biography represent some of the most significant steps forward in Stanford studies ever, and certainly since the publication of Constant Stranger in 2018.
The Fitz Books location as it might have looked in 1948, the year Frank Stanford was born.
This is an exciting time in Stanford studies and sure to be an exciting conversation. Mark your calendars!
And, in case you missed it, Foundlings publisher Aidan Ryan joined McWilliams for a panel discussion on Stanford at the 2025 New Orleans Poetry Festival this past April—watch it below: