Eleanor Stanford is the author of two previous collections of poetry, The Book of Sleep and Bartram's Garden. She was a Fulbright fellow to Brazil, and lives in the Philadelphia area.

Other poems by Eleanor Stanford in Verse Daily:
July 26, 2016:   "Long-billed Curlew (Numenius longirostris)" "Would it help to know that God..."
May 11, 2015:   "Parsnips" "Late sown, they grow..."
April 2, 2008:   "The Book of Sleep" "In the kitchen, you lay down your crowbar..."

Books by Eleanor Stanford:

Other poems on the web by Eleanor Stanford:
Three poems
Two poems
"Medical History"
"Solitary Sandpiper (Totanus solitarius)"
"Invention of the Moon"

Eleanor Stanford's Website.

About Imaginal Marriage:

"The poems in The Imaginal Marriage conflate the experiences and stories of the Brazilian midwives, whose company the narrator keeps on her travels, with her own crises at home as a mother, wife, and lover."
—Lisa Russ Spaar

"The poems in Imaginal Marriage shimmer—not just with beauty, but like objects about to transform. With the touchstone image of the midwife leading us through these pages, the poems shift and move through struggle and comfort, magic and loss, through desire shouldered across generations and continents. What is birthed in these poems feels entirely new and necessary."
—Rachel Richardson

"American women poets have good luck in Brazil, Elizabeth Bishop finding great poems and great love. Here, Eleanor Stanford gives us an encounter with Bahia and its midwives, women who have a thousand times touched the scrap of ripped /caul, pulled back/ its pale spiderweb. Take her enchantment of this gorgeous world: We should always remember the unforeseen can happen, she writes—slipping/into whatever hands are there to receive it."
—Honor Moore

"This marvelous collection, with its exquisite and unforgettable details moves effortlessly between Bahia, Brazil and a ‘suburban twin,' between traditional cures of Bahia's midwives and the rules of Kashrut."
—Jacqueline Osherow