[In the following essay, Wallace discusses the poem “Excellence” as an example of the formal elements of Francis's poetry which make his works “magical.”]

“EXCELLENCE”

Excellence is millimeters and not miles.
From poor to good is great. From good to best is small.
From almost best to best sometimes not measurable.
The man who leaps the highest leaps perhaps an inch
Above the runner-up. How glorious that inch
And that split-second longer in the air before the fall.

In an era of the Avant-Avant-Garde, Robert Francis, who can be passionate without being puffy, is a poet daringly Horatian. Ars celare artem. The art is to hide the art. Like Herbert or Herrick a technician, a metrical Swiss-watchmaker, fond of the chime and the golden cogs, he happily relishes versing. His poems wound us cleanly by their diminutive and lovely precisions.

Consider, because it has so much to say on the matter, his poem “Excellence.” Little seems at first to astonish. The words are plain, the syntax easy. The meaning seems a truth so common we need hardly acknowledge it. The athletic metaphor earns its force by being obvious. But the poem sticks in the mind and its phrases come to hand. “From poor to good is great. From good to best is small.” The simplicity of the elements makes the precision, when at last we attend, surprising.

Not many poets are worth scanning, and only a few, a very few, make it delightful. Here's how it might go for “Excellence”:

^(x)Éxbcĕllenceb is milblimébtĕrs andb not miles.

Frŏm póorb tŏ góodb is gréat.b Frŏm góodb tŏ béstb is smáll.

Frŏm álbmŏst béstb tŏ béstb sometimesb not méasbŭrabblĕ.

Thĕ mánb whŏ léapsb thĕ highbĕst léapsb pĕrhápsb ăn inch

Abóveb thĕ rúnbnĕr-úp.b Hów glórbiousb thát inch

And thátb split-sécbŏnd lóngbĕr inb thĕ áirb bĕfóreb thĕ fáll.

The first surprise is that the poet has chosen hexameters for a poem about legerity. The headless first line—^(x)Éxbcĕllence—at first disguises the choice. Perhaps the line, with its alliteration, gave Francis the meter. Having said that to himself, or written it down, he had at least to consider writing the poem in hexameters. He might have changed to “Excellence is inches and not miles” for a lighter, pentameter line. (As he uses “inch” later in the poem, it wouldn't have been out of place.) But the poem, we realize, is less about the jumper's ease than about his difficulty, the long training, the extra effort that earns excellence, that buys “that split-second longer in the air.” Possibly because hexameter feels as though it goes a little beyond the pentameter norm of English—seems to have to somehow push its way to its end—it was a perfect choice.

Having made that choice, the poet exploits it beautifully, especially in the last line where, after we have become accustomed to lines of six feet, he pushes yet a little farther and ends with a heptameter. We don't see that extra length because the words are shorter; but we hear it. The line lasts in the ear just a split-second longer than the others.

Once we begin noticing, the poem grows richer and richer in meaning. It isn't only the handy alliteration that makes “millimeters and not miles” so exact and contrasting, but the short “i” of “mil-” and the long “i” of “miles.” In line 2, the unrelenting monosyllables and the caesura suggest the distance between “poor” and “best,” a distance that can only be crossed by such a dogged pace as the line itself has. In line 3, the almost completely unaccented secondary accent of the word “measurable,” followed by the unaccented feminine syllable, blurs the beat so much that we almost have to force the voice to record it. (We can't bring ourselves to say “MÉAS-ŭr-Áblĕ.”) And so, coming after the nearly level accents of “béstb sometimesb not méas-,” the line's end mimes the meaning of “not measurable.” Even the slight temptation to hear an off-rhyme of “-ble” with “miles” and “small”—and so to displace the accent falsely onto that syllable—reenforces the effect. The run-on from line 4 to line 5, the poem's first, marks the effort, the spring. The more static second run-on, from line 5 to line 6, and the clustering of accents in the first half of the sentence fragment, followed by the light accent of “inb thĕ áir,” give the final line its appropriate rhythm.

Robert Francis' poems are filled with such minor, hidden exactnesses that bring the poems alive to the ear and so to the attentive mind. The wonderfully elusive syntax of “The Base Stealer” is such an effect, or that poem's gaily metered last line, which leans backward until the very end and forces us to scan it “Délĭcăte,b délĭcăte,b délĭcăte,b délĭcăte—b^(x)nów!” Or the knuckleball off-rhyming of “Pitcher,” which keeps us unsure the poem's couplets are being rhymed until the final

Not to, yet still, still to communicate
Making the batter understand too late.

Or the dazzlingly unlikely “rhyme” words of “Hallelujah: A Sestina”: Hallelujah, boy, hair, praise, father, and Ebenezer, which Francis turns and returns with apparent ease.

A reader may well feel, perhaps due to the word “meters” buried in “millimeters,” that “Excellence” is also, intentionally, about poetry. Several of Francis' poems about sports suggest a similar resonance. In “Catch,” for instance: “Two boys uncoached are tossing a poem together, / Overhand, underhand, backhand, sleight of hand, every hand, / … to outwit the prosy.” “Pitcher,” “The Base Stealer,” “High Diver,” and “Sailboat, Your Secret” offer tempting symbols of the poet's craft and methods, as do “Skier” (“He swings down like the flourish of a pen”) and of course “Apple Peeler” (the spiral of peel is “Like a trick sonnet in one long, versatile sentence”). They make a delicious cluster.

Small though Francis' poems mostly are, and unpretentious, they are magical. Not the least of the magic is the almost unnoticed “formality and formal ease” by means of which the poet so slyly and surely gets the rabbits into the hat.