Forest Primeval: Poems

Winner, 2017 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award 
 Winner, 2016 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in the Poetry category 
 Finalist, 2015 Balcones Poetry Prize 
 Shortlist finalist, 2015 PEN Open Book Award for an exceptional book by an author of color 
"Another Anti-Pastoral," the opening poem of Forest Primeval, confesses that sometimes "words fail." With a "bleat in  her] throat," the poet identifies with the voiceless and wild things in the composed, imposed peace of the Romantic poets with whom she is in dialogue. Vievee Francis's poems engage many of the same concerns as her poetic predecessors--faith in a secular age, the city and nature, aging, and beauty. Words certainly do not fail as Francis sets off into the wild world promised in the title. The wild here is not chaotic but rather free and finely attuned to its surroundings. The reader who joins her will emerge sensitized and changed by the enduring power of her work.


Author: Vievee Francis
Publisher: Triquarterly Books
Published: 11/30/2015
Pages: 104
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.30lbs
Size: 8.40h x 6.10w x 0.30d
ISBN: 9780810132436
About the Author
Longlist finalist, 2015 PEN Open Book Award, for an exceptional book by an author of color 
VIEVEE FRANCIS is author of Horse in the Dark (2012), winner of the Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in various journals and anthologies, including Best American Poetry 2010 and Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry. She was the recipient of the 2009 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award and the 2010 Kresge Artist Fellowship. A Cave Canem Fellow, she is currently an associate editor for Callaloo.