Late Fire, Late Snow: New and Uncollected Poems

by Robert Francis

A nationally acclaimed poet, Robert Francis continued to write and receive recognition for his work right up until his death in 1987 at age 85. His honours include the Prix de Rome given by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Shelley Award of the Poetry Society of America, and the Brandeis Creative Arts Award. In 1984, the Academy of American Poets presented him with its $10,000 fellowship for "distinguished poetic achievement". The 56 poems in this collection were gathered from what Francis wrote in the last decade of his life and from earlier work not reproduced in "Collected poems, 1936-1976". Included are several "lost" poems recently discovered between the pages of Francis's letters. Although age is a recurring theme, "Late fire, late snow" offers an engaging mixture of subject and tone, from the pastoral to the political, the contemplative to the Chaplinesque. This edition, which contains two photographic portraits of the poet, was produced directly from the Fort Juniper limited edition.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1992

About the author

Robert Francis was an American poet who lived most of his life in Amherst, Massachusetts. He was born on August 12, 1901 in Upland, Pennsylvania. 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. 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.

Reviews

[BC Batcheshire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four stars for a slow amble that reads quickly because it is simple in description, but thoughtful.