Pot Shots at Poetry

Poets on Poetry

by Robert Francis

Poets often get away with murder, and not only in their poems. Take, for instance, their behavior on the platform and in the classroom, their uncritical critical clichés, their absurd claims to importance. Take the poet who having just received a grant can now "go to work" on a book of poems. Above all, consider that toplofty fiction, THE POET, the Poet with the capital P, the Poet on the Pedestal, the Poet who is the noblest work of God. No matter how freely and ferociously poets poke fun at one another, sometimes trying to annihilate one another, they all bow down to the Poet with the capital P. Never before have so many absurdities in the poetic world been pinpointed and pinpricked.

220 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

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

[Brandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow--talk about a long break. It's not as though I've stopped reading. Let's just say my life has been...interesting...these past seven months in a way that has distracted me from writing *about* reading. And interesting is usually a good thing, for better or for worse, right? That's what I'm telling myself, anyway. This, then, is my gesture of return: to blogging, to writing things up that I've read, and, I hope, to a bit more discipline.

In any case, next on my list of things to write up was a little book by a poet I wasn't too familiar with before this reading. Technically, there were three books by another poet and friend of mine, Anthony Robinson, read around the same time in a rebellious, mad spring of poetry infatuation, but since none of Tony's books have been published yet, I'll wait until they are before I write them up. And they will be, I'm sure.

The poet I am going to write about, then, is Robert Francis. The book is *Pot Shots at Poetry*, and is a collection of short and ultra-short commentaries on poetry and the poetry world (Xanga, your lack of italicization capabilities--which I don't remember from previous use--is really irritating this grammarian today). Francis was a fairly significant poet for much of the 20th century, though the fact that I've not run across him too frequently makes me think that he's somehow slipped out of style. Or maybe, if Frost was to be believed, Francis was always neglected by the critics. Francis' work at a brief glance seems to be in the vein of the semi-formal pastoralists, a sort of cross between Frost and some of the Southern Agrarians with a wee bit of confessionalism thrown in. He made much of his living through teaching at various prestigious schools, but his writing career spanned a variety of books and notable awards as well.

But back to the book at hand: a subtitle like "The Satirical Rogue on Poetry"--OK, maybe not a subtitle, but more a title of a collection within the collection--in all honesty does turn me off a bit with its self-congratulatory, almost sophomoric feel. And indeed, while some of these commentaries come off almost like zen koans, some of them do come across as, well, personal indulgences.

This isn't to say that there aren't a lot of gems to be found in the book, which was put out in 1980 as a part of the University of Michigan's Poets on Poetry series. Take, for instance, the observation "Poetry is the excitement produced by the unexpected becoming the inevitable." Yes, yes; a thousand times yes. Or this: "Some wild poems are deer or hawks. Others are wild strawberries in the grass, wild apples in the woods." I don't know what it means, exactly, but it's lovely.

It is this observation, however, which seems to most characterize Francis' approach: "I would say that a poem worth defending needs no defense and a poem needing defense is not worth defending. I would say it is not our business to defend poetry but the business of poetry to defend us." It comes in the middle of the short essay "Four Pot Shots at Poetry," which can be read here.

The essay is one of those typical stylistic bits of advice that came out of the minds of mid-20th century American poets--I'm especially thinking of Hugo here, but I've come across plenty of others. What makes Francis still readable for me is the way he walks the precarious line between romanticization of the art and a solidly skeptical view of the culture surrounding the art. Well, that's not entirely true: Francis kept both feet on the side of skepticism. And yet, there is a clear sense when reading his often biting comments of his deep respect for the art form and its history, without any kowtowing to the "scene" which accompanies it. This is something I can respect.

All in all, there is something of the kindly curmudgeon in Francis which made him sit fairly easily with me. There is definitely a recognizable generational personality here: Francis could be my grandfather's close friend, set in his beliefs, expecting me to listen to them with respect over coffee at the local McDonald's, but secretly quite pleased when I decide he's off the mark. Because he knows, then, that I've thought things through for myself, and I'm not listening to some old man go on just because he's made a name for himself. In this way, even with all the barbs, Francis comes across as that most valuable of teachers.