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Forest Primeval
"Another Anti-Pastoral," the opening poem of Forest Primeval, confesses that sometimes "words fail." With a "bleat in [her] throat," the poet identifies with the voiceless and wild things in the composed, imposed peace of the Romantic poets with whom she is in dialogue. Vievee Francis’s poems engage many of the same concerns as her poetic predecessors—faith in a secular age, the city and nature, aging, and beauty. Words certainly do not fail as Francis sets off into the wild world promised in the title. The wild here is not chaotic but rather free and finely attuned to its surroundings. The reader who joins her will emerge sensitized and changed by the enduring power of her work.
Winner, 2016 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in the Poetry category
Finalist, 2015 Balcones Poetry Prize
Shortlist finalist, 2015 PEN Open Book Award for an exceptional book by an author of color
Winner, 2016 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in the Poetry category
Finalist, 2015 Balcones Poetry Prize
Shortlist finalist, 2015 PEN Open Book Award for an exceptional book by an author of color
104 pages, Paperback
First published November 30, 2015
21 people are currently reading
696 people want to read
About the author
Vievee Francis
14 books38 followersVievee Francis is author of Horse in the Dark (2012), winner of the Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in various journals and anthologies, including Best American Poetry 2010 and Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry. She was the recipient of the 2009 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award and the 2010 Kresge Artist Fellowship. A Cave Canem Fellow, she is currently an associate editor for Callaloo.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews
December 2, 2017
Most reviews of Forest Primeval will probably focus on the many poems herein that are based on fairytales, reimaginings of Snow White and Bluebeard and Circe and incubus myths and the like filtered through a totally unique sensibility, raw and queasy and horror-filled yet also wiry and potent (e.g.: "Overcome / with curiosity, my fear was your blue beard / between my legs-- / a nightmare I couldn't shake, / and now must receive, the feather of it, / each hair's nightly collapse against my own / webbing"). A kind of defiant reclaiming of the grotesque. And it's true that those fairytale-themed poems are great, as this entire book is as a whole. But damn if this isn't one of the most powerful, sui generis poems I've ever encountered: http://www.muzzlemagazine.com/vievee-...
September 21, 2016
3.5 stars
An absolutely beautiful collection--a little bit about growing up, being a woman, and folklore, faith, and fairytales. Highly recommend.
An absolutely beautiful collection--a little bit about growing up, being a woman, and folklore, faith, and fairytales. Highly recommend.
March 30, 2018
This is a wild collection of poems and the opening poem, “Another Antipastoral,” gives the reader a good idea of how the poetic speaker describes herself throughout the rest of the book: “Don’t you see? I am shedding my skins. I am a paper hive, / a wolf spider, / the creeping ivy, the ache of a birch, a heifer, a doe” (3). One of the most prominent themes is reflection on how she does not conform to idealized white beauty standards. The subsequent pursuit of love is a rocky road, in poems like “Taking It” and “Approaching Fifty,” but one that eventually leads to the husband in “How Delicious to Say It” and “Husband Fair.”
March 6, 2018
Amazing.
April 6, 2020
Actual rating: 4.5
Really powerful poetry! So vivid and raw. Had some great parallels to fairytales too.
Really powerful poetry! So vivid and raw. Had some great parallels to fairytales too.
February 6, 2023
“But I’m speaking of what the body keeps inside.”
May 2, 2025
My favorite poem was Emancipation. This book was too heterosexual for me.
February 18, 2018
These poems are take-my-breath-away gorgeous. Far ranging, surprising in turn of phrase and direction, carefully and originally structured, I could reach each poem again and again and find something new each time. There are poems inspired by myth, by fairy tales, by the blues, by love, by wounds of heart, body and soul. Howlin' Wolf prowls these pages. From a distance he howls through each word: a low growl, fangs bared, the plaintive wail of a harmonica. This is urgent, important work, so worthy of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award it won.
August 3, 2023
‘Jesus and the Crows’ made me gasp.
August 4, 2019
According to Overdrive I added this July 30, 2018.
August 13, 2023
This was my book for Day 12 of #TheSealeyChallenge.
I am now very much looking forward to reading her other poems, as this collection WOW'ed me.
The first two poems--Another Anti-Pastoral and White Mountain--grabbed me immediately. Although nature, so prevalent in these poems, dips in and out during the rest of the book, other topics are equally strong: relationships, violence, childhood/memories, language, and fairy tales.
The bits that resonated with me were the places--Francis evokes numerous places throughout the book and, as someone who writes a lot about places myself, I thoroughly enjoyed these poems. The other thing Francis does is ask questions--I don' think I have ever read so many poems with so many questions! It was different and fun!
The book is 6 sections and the poems are various forms of free verse.
A few favorite lines:
" . . . Give me the pleasure
of knowing the giving matters to more than the receiver"
--Altrusism
"Sometimes the early bells toll a song I recall from a childhood
spent in a church-dotted South"
--Keys
"Before the inevitable we attempt to hold ourselves in,
but our everything spills."
--Grasp
"But I am speaking of what the body keeps inside,
when the eyes are a window to nothing."
--Still Life with Dead Game
"I cried as if I were slicing onions"
--Beast and Beauty
Some favorite poems? Ahhh, so many!
Taking It, So Delicious to Say It, Visiting the House on Long Island, Cake Baby, Bluster, She Whose Brothers Turned to Swans Pleads Her Case, Inevitability, Apologia, Consider the Prince As He Considered Her Mouth, Chimera, Husband Fair, as well as the first two poems in the book that I already mentioned.
A powerful collection, and it is easy to see why it won the Kingsley Tufts in 2017.
I am now very much looking forward to reading her other poems, as this collection WOW'ed me.
The first two poems--Another Anti-Pastoral and White Mountain--grabbed me immediately. Although nature, so prevalent in these poems, dips in and out during the rest of the book, other topics are equally strong: relationships, violence, childhood/memories, language, and fairy tales.
The bits that resonated with me were the places--Francis evokes numerous places throughout the book and, as someone who writes a lot about places myself, I thoroughly enjoyed these poems. The other thing Francis does is ask questions--I don' think I have ever read so many poems with so many questions! It was different and fun!
The book is 6 sections and the poems are various forms of free verse.
A few favorite lines:
" . . . Give me the pleasure
of knowing the giving matters to more than the receiver"
--Altrusism
"Sometimes the early bells toll a song I recall from a childhood
spent in a church-dotted South"
--Keys
"Before the inevitable we attempt to hold ourselves in,
but our everything spills."
--Grasp
"But I am speaking of what the body keeps inside,
when the eyes are a window to nothing."
--Still Life with Dead Game
"I cried as if I were slicing onions"
--Beast and Beauty
Some favorite poems? Ahhh, so many!
Taking It, So Delicious to Say It, Visiting the House on Long Island, Cake Baby, Bluster, She Whose Brothers Turned to Swans Pleads Her Case, Inevitability, Apologia, Consider the Prince As He Considered Her Mouth, Chimera, Husband Fair, as well as the first two poems in the book that I already mentioned.
A powerful collection, and it is easy to see why it won the Kingsley Tufts in 2017.
August 13, 2017
I've been eager to read this since it was published, and ended up playing nearly a year of lost book bingo with the library to get it. I think I came in with some expectations as a result of the wait, which I try never to have with poetry.
Francis is a talented poet, very raw in her presentation; that I wasn't expecting the poems in this volume in no way took from their power. I felt like I was on a back porch, listening to a friend work through their problems, drinking whiskey from a jelly jar; not looking over to give them privacy to weep. Confessional, I suppose, but not confessional in the typical context; these poems are more like ripped from a mouth when the kitchen door is closed, with only the women to hear. Like a diary with a cheap lock stuffed between the mattress and box spring.
I need to take some time and then circle back, because the impact was greater than my ability to process at the time.
Francis is a talented poet, very raw in her presentation; that I wasn't expecting the poems in this volume in no way took from their power. I felt like I was on a back porch, listening to a friend work through their problems, drinking whiskey from a jelly jar; not looking over to give them privacy to weep. Confessional, I suppose, but not confessional in the typical context; these poems are more like ripped from a mouth when the kitchen door is closed, with only the women to hear. Like a diary with a cheap lock stuffed between the mattress and box spring.
I need to take some time and then circle back, because the impact was greater than my ability to process at the time.
October 29, 2025
A collection of poems about being a woman, desire, family, folklore, faith, and identity.
from Taking It: "I had always / punched. What kind of girl are you? / The kind who wants to live, I said, and I did want to / until I didn't anymore. But I wanted the leaving / to be on my terms, so I hit my father back. / He owned me like any good, country father. He / waited for a husband to tame what he couldn't corral, / to throw a rope like fingers 'round a neck."
from Cake Baby: "And I who have never been a mother / may now proclaim myself queen with a mouthful of cake / and a baby by the side of my plate, red mouthed / and glowing as if in a fairy tale."
from Having Never Told the Tarot Reader My Question, She Answers It: "The old woman's hands fast-forward two cards by two / without pause except for the questions she asks, / which I won't answer, she being the reader, / let her tell me."
from Taking It: "I had always / punched. What kind of girl are you? / The kind who wants to live, I said, and I did want to / until I didn't anymore. But I wanted the leaving / to be on my terms, so I hit my father back. / He owned me like any good, country father. He / waited for a husband to tame what he couldn't corral, / to throw a rope like fingers 'round a neck."
from Cake Baby: "And I who have never been a mother / may now proclaim myself queen with a mouthful of cake / and a baby by the side of my plate, red mouthed / and glowing as if in a fairy tale."
from Having Never Told the Tarot Reader My Question, She Answers It: "The old woman's hands fast-forward two cards by two / without pause except for the questions she asks, / which I won't answer, she being the reader, / let her tell me."
December 9, 2018
I read this once, slowly, and then again, only a little faster - it's a collection rich with song, folklore, fairy tale, myth, magic, and a clear kinship with the natural world that isn't forced or overly clever, merely felt and lived and described in a voice you can hear breathing next to you. Poems like "Taking It" and "Skinned" took my breath away, illuminating family history in a way that put me there. "Cake Baby" and "Wolf" surprised with their humor and inventiveness. And her handling of other myths and fairy tales is masterful. A gorgeous book that takes the reader along for its discoveries.
June 22, 2023
As a white woman who writes a lot about nature, I'm always interested in reading nature poetry written from perspectives other than my own, particularly from writers of color. In these poems, Frances uses surprising natural imagery to explore gender, non-parenthood by choice, fairy tales, and more. I found the poems to be fascinating, dense, heady and rich. I've read the book through once so far and I'm sure it will reveal more layers of craft and meaning with each re-read. I borrowed it from the library to try it out but this is one I want to own and revisit.
June 27, 2017
I particularly liked this collection. Two of my favourites were 'A song of the ridge' and 'All kinds of howl in''. I love the structures of some of these such as the listing of 'Happy?' and the 'given' structure of 'Altruism.. These poems reverberate in the mind and snatches come back at odd moments.
June 11, 2018
Excellent book. I checked this one out from the library, and have decided that Vievee Francis' antipastoral (as she names it) is going to be purchased and given it's own place on my shelve. Complex, prickly, fearless, luscious. This book needs to be read and re-read.
Here's a link to the Poetry Foundation's entry on Francis:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poet...
Here's a link to the Poetry Foundation's entry on Francis:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poet...
August 19, 2020
Vievee Francis is a great poet. The poems in this book draw the reader in. Her language and lines are beautiful to read. The struggle of being a black woman and of being in nature, unexpectedly difficult, in different relationships and violence and more. “Like a sorrow of banjoes” This title: “She Whose Brothers Turned to Swans Pleads her Case” Forest Primeval is worth reading
October 4, 2020
This is a poetry collection I revisit often. Francis packs so much meaning, intensity and surprise into her work that you are compelled to read and read again to catch what you must have missed the first time. The way she addresses the body in a subtle but very present way is remarkable. My favourite collection by her for sure.
August 27, 2023
Sealey book 22.
This was a really powerful collection and I completely inhaled it on my morning bus ride. But that was many hours ago and I’m so tired right now, I’m having trouble being coherent. So I’ll just say “highly recommended!” And give you some favorites: “Taking It,” “Keys,” “A Song on the Ridge” (feels like a folk song from a mythology series!), and “All Kinds of Howlin’ .”
This was a really powerful collection and I completely inhaled it on my morning bus ride. But that was many hours ago and I’m so tired right now, I’m having trouble being coherent. So I’ll just say “highly recommended!” And give you some favorites: “Taking It,” “Keys,” “A Song on the Ridge” (feels like a folk song from a mythology series!), and “All Kinds of Howlin’ .”
October 21, 2019
This was an interesting introduction to a contemporary poet I had not heard about. Also got to see a video interview of the poet, and hear her read a couple poems, which I feel enhanced my experience reading this, her third book of poetry. I will likely investigate one of her earlier books.
November 14, 2020
3 stars
Somehow just not what I was expecting from the other work I had read of Francis'. This collection started strong but quickly lost steam, and the fairy tale poems started to feel repetitive.
Somehow just not what I was expecting from the other work I had read of Francis'. This collection started strong but quickly lost steam, and the fairy tale poems started to feel repetitive.
January 2, 2022
3.5 stars. I loved Like Jesus to the Crows - absolutely beautiful. Enjoyed so much of the poetry and her story. I echo others’ thoughts that the fairy tale inspired poetry felt a bit repetitive, and I felt the beginning of the book was more compelling than the end.
February 4, 2023
I loved this collection of poems. Her poems ring with the wisdom of the ages and the wisdom of this age. She invites us into childhood stories to see our own lives and the world. She invites us into her family’s stories and helps us see our own lives anew. I love her work.
September 21, 2025
p. 41: "Like the memory of a monarch landing / in the palm of the hand the summer's end / contains no promise so its moment is held only briefly"
beetje te zoetsappig en te veel sprookjes naar mijn smaak?
beetje te zoetsappig en te veel sprookjes naar mijn smaak?
June 26, 2017
This book of poetry is one to be savored, and read, again and again. Each poem left me wanting to stop and ponder, before turning to the next one.
June 30, 2017
vibrant and wonderful
August 27, 2017
gorgeously lyrical, if more than a little disturbing. lots of reworkings of fairy tales made even darker & more psychologically complicated than the originals.
December 1, 2018
These poems speak to the deep connection we have with place.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews