He also continued writing (contributing so many poems to the "Pup Tent Poets" column of Stars and Stripes that a reader wrote, "I am getting bored/ with the works of Edsel Ford").
In February 1957, he became a full-time writer, and a year later went back to his family's farm as writing was not producing enough income for him to live independently.
[2] His poems appeared in a wide variety of publications, among the best-known of which were the Saturday Review, The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, Ladies' Home Journal, and McCall's.
He also reviewed books for the Tulsa World and wrote a column, "The Golden Country", for the Ozarks Mountaineer.
[1] Two strong influences were mentors from his college days, the Arkansas poet laureate Rosa Zagnoni Marinoni and the professor and antiquarian W. J.
"[1] Ford received the 1966 Alice Fay di Castagnola Award[3] of the Poetry Society of America for his work in progress A Landscape for Dante.