Robert Francis (poet)

Robert Francis (August 12, 1901; Upland, Pennsylvania – July 13, 1987) was an American poet who lived most of his life in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Life

Robert Francis was born on August 12, 1901 in Upland, Pennsylvania.^[1] He graduated from Harvard University in 1923. He would later attend the Graduate School of Education at Harvard where he once said that he felt that he'd come home. He lived in a small house he built himself in 1940, which he called Fort Juniper, near Cushman Village in Amherst, Massachusetts. One of his poetic mentors was Robert Frost, and indeed Francis's first volume of poems, Stand Here With Me (1936), displays a poetic voice eerily reminiscent of Frost's own in carefully crafted nature poems.^[2] Frost once said: "poetry is the only acceptable way to say one thing and mean another."

Later work

Francis published very little during the 1940s–1950s. He decided that "for better or worse, I was a poet and there was really nothing else for me to do but go on being a poet. It was too late to change even if I had wanted to. Poetry was my most central, intense and inwardly rewarding experience."^[3] In 1960, Francis published The Orb Weaver, which revived his reputation as a poet.

Francis uses hidden meanings in his poems, which suggest another way that Frost made an impression on Francis's poetry. In later volumes, Francis found a voice distinctively his own, relaxed in meter and characterized by puns, word-plays, slant rhymes, and repetitions of key words. Aside from one long narrative poem in Frostian blank verse, Francis's poetry consists largely of concise lyrics, somewhat limited in thematic range but intensely crafted and deeply personal. Frost would later say that Robert Francis was America's best neglected poet. He often wrote about nature and baseball. His autobiography, The Trouble with Francis, was published in 1971 and details his struggle with neglect.^[4] Francis died July 13, 1987.

Awards

Francis won the Shelley Memorial Award in 1939. In 1984 the Academy of American Poets gave Francis its award for distinguished poetic achievement.^[5]

Works

Poetry

• Stand Here With Me. The Macmillan Company. 1936.
• The Face Against the Glass. by the author. 1950.
• The Orb Weaver. University Press of New England. 1960. ISBN 978-0-8195-1005-1.
• Come out into the sun: poems new and selected. University of Massachusetts Press. 1965. ISBN 978-0-87023-015-8.
• Like ghosts of eagles: poems, 1966–1974. University of Massachusetts Press. 1974.
• Collected Poems, 1936–1976. NetLibrary, Incorporated. 1985. ISBN 978-0-585-28147-6.
• Late fire, late snow: new and uncollected poems. University of Massachusetts Press. 1992. ISBN 978-0-87023-814-7.
• http://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/robert-francis/thoreau-in-italy/

Autobiography

• The Trouble with Francis. University of Massachusetts Press. 1971. ISBN 978-0-87023-083-7.

References

1. http://library.syr.edu/digital/guides/f/francis_r.htm Robert Francis Papers: An inventory of his papers at Syracuse University
2. Perkins, George and Barbara Perkins, Ed. Contemporary American Literature. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1988, p. 320.
3. Perkins, p. 320.
4. Perkins, p. 320.
5. Perkins, p. 320

• The Friendship of Robert Frost and Robert Francis: High-pressure Weather and Country Air by Wally Swist (Puckerbrush Press, Constance Hunting, Editor, Orono, ME: Puckerbrush Review, xxi, ii, Winter/Spring 2003).
• The Friendship of Two New England Poets: Robert Frost and Robert Francis, A Lecture Presented at the Robert Frost Farm in Derry, New Hampshire, by Wally Swist Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2009.

External links

• "A Poet's Voice Rises from the Archives", All Things Considered, April 1, 2007, NPR
• Robert Francis Papers at Syracuse University
• Robert Francis Papers at University of Massachusetts, Amherst
• Robert Francis Collection in Special Collections, Jones Library, Amherst, Massachusetts
• Poetry reading by Robert Francis, May 20, 1971 (audio)