Robert Francis was born on August 12, 1901. He graduated from Harvard University in 1923. 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 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. He often wrote about nature.Francis died in July 13, 1987.

Francis won the Shelley Memorial Award in 1939.

Poetry

Autobiography