After the Serpent's Word - Poems

Francis Fike is a serious poet of considerable accomplishment. He finds grace and ceremony in the ordinary: in two memorable poems, he likens the poet's art to playing a guitar and to hammering nails with precision into a new roof. I admire his lyrics,his epigrams, his skilled translations from Old English, French, and Latin. Fike aims high: clearly he sets himself to write in the great tradition of those who insisted, like Hardy and the late master formalist Yvor Winters, on clear sense, moral insight, and tightly controlled craft." --X.J. Kennedy, Dark Horses: Poems