Matthew, I must thank YOU tonight for the laughter and astonishment your
Robert Francis anecdote provoked (and ask you where you found his poems
online, while I'm at it--maybe he got better since I knew him in 1970s
Amherst, when he was already an old man and a pretty bad poet!). Anyway, to
back up, he was one of Amherst's many eccentrics, and Joe Langland was very
fond of him, even defended his poetry when the smartasses in my MFA cohort
would giggle over it. But what I'll never forget is Robert's cabin, where
Joe took a few of us for afternoon tea one winter day--afternoon tea being
the kind of ceremony Robert was famous for, as he was for this cabin, which
he'd had built for himself on the shoestring annuity that saw him (very
frugally) through his long old age. (Robert's poverty was so legendary, in
fact, that Joe stopped at a bakery on the way to tea and stocked up with far
more pastry than our little group would consume at tea so that Robert would
have some leftovers.)

His cabin was like a little dollhouse, or rather a little girl's playhouse,
with everything scaled down not only for efficiency and economic reasons in
Robert's case, but simply because he was so tiny himself--and rather pretty
at that, with his fey manner, which I think you'd have enjoyed, as I did,
although it was hard not to giggle when he showed us his bedroom (the cabin
had only 2 or 3 rooms altogether) and there, on the nightstand beside his
pretty-quilt-covered bed, was a framed miniature of the Emily Dickinson
portrait that hangs at Amherst College. But when Robert noticed me staring
at it, he said, very seriously, "She's the love of my life, you know." Such
a sweet memory you've brought back, Matthew--and what a sweetly odd little
man Robert Francis was!

Candice



_____________________
> I received an email from a namesake who wanted to know if I might be related
> to the American poet Robert Francis, a friend of Robert Frost, then another
> from someone who found my website when trying to track down Robert Francis
> poems on the web. So I found some of his poems online myself, and enjoyed
> them. He seems to be unknown in the UK, but I don't know why - they were
> quirky, witty pastoral poems that reminded me not only of Frost but also of
> Norman MacCaig. I'd like to read more.
>
> Best wishes
>
> Matthew
_____________________
>> The only time I tried a search on my own name it brought up a Dave Kennedy
>> who plays bass in a US grunge metal band called Poetic Rage. You couldn't
>> make it up.
>>
>> On-line identity is weird because it makes you *ownable* and knowable in a
>> completely different way. I got an e-mail last week from someone in the US
>> with the same surname as me, also a poet, who'd come across my work and
> just
>> wanted to say *congratulations my fellow Kennedy*. That's the weird bit *my
>> fellow Kennedy* - as if we've all got something more in common than just
> the
>> name.
>>
>> cheers
>> David