Robert Francis - Emergence
If you have watched a molting mantis With exquisite precision and no less Exquisite patience, extricate itself Leaf-green and like a green leaf clinging Little by little, leg by leg, Out of its chitin shell, you likewise know How one day coaxes itself out of another Slowly, slowly by imperceptible degrees Of gray, and having fully emerged, pauses To dry its wings.
Robert Francis got kind of a bad shake. He was a disciple of Robert Frost and, unfortunately for him, his early voice was very Frostian. As a result, he entered a realm of neglect that he wouldn’t ever really escape. He handled it well, all things considered, writing an autobiography in 1971 with great humor regarding his place in the shadow of the more famous Robert. I strongly encourage you to check that out if you get the chance because it also has a great amount of insight into the mind of Frost. It is worth noting that Francis’ poetry was actually very different from Frost’s. He was playful and irreverent at times (an entire poem about different cocks) in a way that Frost never attempted.
This poem was very much autobiographical. Francis had previously referred to himself as a molting mantis in a separate writing, and through that lens, we can appreciate the piece further.
Although free verse (Frost must have rolled in his grave), the poem is loosely iambic. Its lack of clear lyric mirrors its content - this was an escape from a rigid shell for Francis. Still, there is some wonderfully subtle play: “Exquisite precision […] exquisite patience […] extricate […] emerged, pauses.” Francis is playing with sounds that give a lyrical sense despite the open verse.
The line “Leaf-green and like a green leaf clinging” is so damned clever and ballsy. He’s using the same image twice, but it manages to make my brain have to work twice as hard. First, I have to go to my mental crayola box and shuffle through the greens before I even think of how a leaf clings, seemingly colorless in my mind’s eye as I focus on the act of clinging.
The next line is pure wordplay: “Little by little, leg by leg.” He follows it with a long sequence of o’s, “Out of its chitin shell, you likewise know // How one day coaxes itself out of another // Slowly, slowly” that adds a certain haunting meditative property. Like a long “ohm” that might fit such a symbolic transformation.
The final line left dangling would have been entirely intentional by a man who invented a style based on word count. The act of wing drying is the final vestige of an insect’s past. It is the countdown until the shell is discarded, along with everything that came before. This poem was about Francis drying his wings. Giving himself time to contemplate where he had come from, before flying away defiantly, finally.