"The Sound I Listened For" is all clear sound, precise, honest, unequivocal. Robert Francis has a gift for seeing minutiae which are anything but trivial. In this he reminds the reader of his more illustrious forerunners, especially of one whose background is contiguous. It is nothing against Robert Francis that he often resembles Robert Frost. But, though he sometimes chooses the same landscape, he should avoid using the same language. "True North," "Statement," and "The Wasp"—to name only three—read like poems that Frost had been writing and had not yet decided to print. They are admirably neat, they are playfully philosophical, they blend observation with imagination. But we know who wrote them first. (p. 345)