Hope College | English

Francis Fike

francis fike

FIKE, FRANCIS, Professor Emeritus (1968-1998).

Education: A.B., Duke University (1954); M.Div,. Union Theological Seminary (1957); M.A., Stanford University (1958); Ph.D., Stanford University (1964).

Interests: Poetry.

Selected Works: Underbrush (Florence, KY: Robert L. Barth, 1986), In the Same Rivers (Florence, KY: Robert L. Barth, 1989), After the Serpent's Word (Santa Barbara: Fithian Press, 1997), Off and On (Edgewood, KY: Robert L. Barth, 2000), In Season and Out (Rockingham, WA [Australia]: Equilibrium Books, 2003), and numerous shorter publications.

Publications:

In Season and Out (Rockingham, Australia: Equilibrium Books, 2003).
The thirty-seven poems in this collection are divided into three sections, or “seasons”: seasons of the mind--on human relationships, attitudes, and behaviors; seasons of the earth--on the cycles and restorative powers of nature and encounters with animals; and seasons of the spirit--on occasions of encountering the Holy.

Off and On (Edgewood, Kentucky: Robert L. Barth, 2000).
Most of the poems in this chapbook deal with subjects related in one way or another to the poet’s grandfather, to whom the book is dedicated: “Gramp’s Chicks,” “Haying,” “Walking by the Brook,” “The Encounter,” and “Turnpike Kill.” The centerpiece of the collection is “Sabbath Morning,” an eight-stanza long poem in blank verse replying to Wallace Stevens’ poem “Sunday Morning” which questions the reality of Christian belief in resurrection and afterlife. The book ends with two hymns, “Hymn for Communion” and “Hymn of Praise.”

After the Serpent's Word (Santa Barbara, California: Fithian Press, 1997).
This collection of forty-three poems blends together new works with some that were published earlier. Well-known poet and critic X. J. Kennedy, commenting on the book, says Fike “finds grace and ceremony in the ordinary. . . . 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.”

In the Same Rivers (Florence, Kentucky: Robert L. Barth, 1989).
The eighteen poems in this chapbook experiment with a variety of metrical and stanzaic forms. Poems on love, loss, and the passing of time form a unifying motif in the collection (“Lakeside,” “Evening, West of Eden,” “Graveside,’ “Lacuna,” “Doves,” “Going Back,” “Grandfather Plowing,” “Passage,” “Afterglow”). Several of the poems are translations or imitations classical poets.

Underbrush (Kentucky: Robert L. Barth, 1986).
The fourteen poems in this chapbook reflect a variety of the author’s interests: his love of nature, in “Sparrowhawk,” “Beaver Brook,” and “The Warmth Within”; his love of family and ancestry in “The Homestead” and “Death of a Patriarch”; his love of the classics in “Bookplate,” “On Mourning,” and “The Renunciation of Odysseus”; and his love of the sea in “Off Henderson Harbor” and “Cape Hatteras.”