Private Fire : Robert Francis's Ecopoetry and Prose

The man Robert Frost called America's "best neglected poet" is neglected no longer. Matthew James Babcock's Private Fire delivers a long-overdue exploration of the life and work of one of America's most fascinating but underappreciated writers. An anachronism in his century, Robert Francis appears in this study as a quiet but truly prophetic figure whose writing raises a symphonic voice of warning-and renewal. His twentieth-century literary themes anticipate and resonate with current international concerns over the sociocultural cost of enviromental devastation, the spiritual price of industrialization and consumersim, and the continued hyperseparation between humans and the natural world. More than two decades after Francis's death coincided with the rise of ecocriticism, this book traces his one-man quest to use language, natural resources, and a placid rural pragmatism to forge a lasting solidarity between himself and his surroundings. Private Fire sweeps together several decades' worth of unique scholarly material to produce the definitive "green reading" of the Francis corpus: rare images, archival gems, personal anecdotes, journal entries. and letters from such literary giants as Donald Hall and Marianne Moore, who remained Francis's ardent supporters. Babcock's examination begins with a brief biographical section that situates Francis historically among his contemporaries, followed by an analysis of Dickinson's and Frost's influence on Francis. For decades, proponents of deep ecology, place studies, and environmental theory have fostered the continued emergence of a verdant vernacular that explores the complex interplay between the literary arts and the lay of the land. Babcock's Private Fire. Robert Francis's Ecopoetry and Prose joins this discourse-in-progress and provides ideal material for general readers seeking enlightenment undergraduate and graduate courses hoping courses hoping to sow uncommon experience in the margins of the canon, and scholars specializing in twentieth-century American literature, regionalism, environmentalism, gender studies, and minority literature. Book jacket.