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.

Matthew James Babcock teaches composition, literature, and creative writing at Brigham young University-idaho in Rexburg.