SOURCE: “Faith and Form: Some American Poetry of 1976,” in Sewanee Review, Vol. 85, No. 3, July, 1977, pp. 537-38.

In the following review, Ramsey offers a favorable assessment of Francis's Collected Poems, pointing to the many good and “extremely good” poems in the collection.

Robert Francis's Collected Poems 1936-1976 presents us with a career to be admired, to be enjoyed, to be examined with careful respect. Francis is almost infallibly a good poet, at ease with the graces of the iambic line, a clear eye looking at nature, a man quietly stoic, or rejoicing, or loving, or amused. Robert Frost is a strong influence, though Francis has tempered and smoothed some Frostian themes, impishnesses, and ironies. Francis's eye and feelings are sure; his thought, less so. He writes, “I follow Plato with my mind. / Pure beauty strikes me as a little thin.” Then a rudeness tempts me to say that Francis...