Robert Francis (August 12, 1901 – July 13, 1987) was an American poet who lived most of his life in Amherst, Massachusetts.
His 1953 poem, “The Pitcher”, is a classic work among coaches, athletes, baseball players—and pitchers and artists. It demonstrates brilliantly an example of how any physical action is not just acting on the environment, but also an interactive communication with all elements of it, including the people.
Life
Robert Francis was born on August 12, 1901, in Upland, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Harvard University in 1923. He would later attend the Graduate School of Education at Harvard where he once said that he felt that he'd come home. He lived in a small house he had built for himself in 1940, which he called Fort Juniper, near Cushman Village in Amherst, Massachusetts. Francis chose to name his home "Fort Juniper" since juniper is nearly indestructible. His main poetic mentor was Robert Frost, and indeed Francis's first volume of poems, Stand Here With Me (1936), displays a poetic voice reminiscent of Frost's own in carefully crafted nature poems. However, his second book of poetry Valhalla and Other Poems was awarded with the 1939 Shelley Memorial Award. Frost once said: "poetry is the only acceptable way to say one thing and mean another."
Later work
Francis published very little during the 1940s and 1950s. He decided that "for better or worse, I was a poet and there was really nothing else for me to do but go on being a poet. It was too late to change even if I had wanted to. Poetry was my most central, intense and inwardly rewarding experience."