Vievee Francis
Biographic Data
| ID | 3613072 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Vievee Francis |
| GIVEN NAMES | Vievee |
| FAMILY NAME | Francis |
| SIGNATURE | FRANCIS V |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
In Voluntary Solitude: An Interview with Charles Henry Rowell
The Keening
The Keening Vievee Francis (bio) swells the moon. And the eyes that look to it.And the ears that hear it move over and betweenevery living thing. That move through every dead one.When stabbed, if stabbed more than once, a thresholdis reached. The point of no return. A horizonthat holds no other horizon. The pain keeps.But the blood flows out wending its way as waterso salted finds its level. The sound of the wound like the soundof the wounds. Con…
Callaloo and the Creative Writing Workshop
Callaloo and the Creative Writing Workshop* A.H. Jerriod Avant (bio), Gregory Pardlo (bio), Vievee Francis (bio), Ravi Howard (bio), Helen Elaine Lee (bio), Desiree Bailey (bio), Jeremy M. Clark (bio), Ama Codjoe (bio), and Jonterri Gadson (bio) AVANT: Offering workshops across the Black Diaspora, the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop is held at Brown University in Providence, RI, University of West Indies in Cave Hill, and the University of Oxf…
The Future of Callaloo: A Round Table
The Future of CallalooA Round Table* Dagmawi Woubshet (bio), Robert Reid-Pharr (bio), LeRonn P. Brooks (bio), Hermine Pinson (bio), Jean-Paul Rocchi (bio), Hortense Spillers (bio), Vievee Francis (bio), Ebony Bailey (bio), and Sonya Posmentier (bio) WOUBSHET: Welcome to the last session of this conference and celebration of Callaloo’s 40th anniversary. The panel is called “The Future of Callaloo: A Round Table.” If you are looking at the program,…
On Callaloo as a Forty-Year-Old Project
On Callaloo as a Forty-Year-Old Project* Margo Natalie Crawford (bio), Vievee Francis (bio), and LeRonn P. Brooks (bio) These remarks were given at the opening of the Callaloo Conference at Oxford University celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Callaloo. CRAWFORD: Welcome, everyone. We want to begin today with three speakers who will discuss the significance of the occasion, and I am honored to be the first speaker. I’m Margo Crawford, professor o…
Callaloo and Creative Writing
Callaloo and Creative Writing* Jacinda Townsend (bio), Vievee Francis (bio), Gregory Pardlo (bio), John McCluskey Jr. (bio), Ishion Hutchinson (bio), Joshua Bennett (bio), AH Jerriod Avant (bio), Stacy Parker Le Melle (bio), and Sebastian Matthews (bio) TOWNSEND: Hi and welcome to the panel Callaloo and Creative Writing. In 1997, Dr. Rowell formed the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop. The workshop was first mounted at HBCUs like Morehouse, Spel…
Callaloo: A Forum for Academics and Creative Writers
Callaloo: A Forum for Academics and Creative Writers* Margo Natalie Crawford (bio), Vievee Francis (bio), Joshua Bennett (bio), Dagmawi Woubshet (bio), and Jeremy M. Clark (bio) Brent Hayes Edwards was also a presenter on this panel. He provided Callaloo with an essay version of his remarks (see pgs. 67–71 in this issue). CRAWFORD: I am Margo Crawford and I am at Cornell University. I’m going to start today with a real focus on Charles Rowell’s i…
Photographs
A Kind of Emancipation: After Kara Walker
A Kind of EmancipationAfter Kara Walker Vievee Francis (bio) The swallows exploded from your chest.How many? How many?One then another, every sorrow wingedand seeking an invitation, taking its place in your breast, crowdedalong the lung’s limbs, those barreled ribs. There was no room,but they kept coming. You couldn’t keep your mouth shut,so more, then more sought that grotto, small necksof despair bent on entering. And what was it they wanted?Wh…
Toward Breakthrough: Fool's Gold, Quicksilver, and the Insistence of Passion
Toward BreakthroughFool’s Gold, Quicksilver, and the Insistence of Passion Vievee Francis (bio) Like patience, passion comes from the same Latin root: pati. It does not mean to flow with exuberance. It means to suffer. —Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves There is scarcely any passion without struggle. —Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays Or perhaps Mandela puts it better for our purposes, having said, There is no passion to be f…
Mutuality and Startlement: Love at the 2012 Callaloo Conference at Princeton
Necessary Crossings: Bridge, Flux, and Raft at “Translations” the 2011 Callaloo Conference
Necessary CrossingsBridge, Flux, and Raft at “Translations” the 2011 Callaloo Conference Vievee Francis (bio) Translatability is an essential quality of certain works . . . it means rather that a specific significance inherent in the original manifests itself in its translatability. —Walter Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator” trans. Hannah Arendt And this doesn’t answer the question of translatability. It is a circular assertion. If it is tran…
Interview with Jide Aje
Interview with Jide Aje* Vievee Francis (bio) Francis: I've seen your early work. What were the motivating factors around your shift from representational art to abstraction? Aje: I really don't know. I think it was just time. The representational work came mostly as a result of the studio practice I had while in school and immediately after school. Much of the work in school was representation—life drawing, portrait drawing, composition, and so …
Risk and the Sublime: Pushing the Personal Limit at the 2012 Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop
Risk and the SublimePushing the Personal Limit at the 2012 Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop Vievee Francis (bio) In the well of my throat everything I wanted to say was dangerous. —James Allen Hall I don’t trust beauty anymore. —Reginald Shepherd I surprised myself during this summer’s 2012 Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop at Brown University. It is not unusual for a workshop participant, while in the throes of critique and study, to find the…
Beyond Description: Ekphrasis and the Expanding Lens
Beyond DescriptionEkphrasis and the Expanding Lens Vievee Francis (bio) Tell us, Dutch painters, what will happen When the apple is peeled, when the silk dims, when all the colours grow cold. Tell us what darkness is. —Adam Zagajewski, “Dutch Painters” I Ekphrasis, even if simply defined as a literary response to visual art, is rich in potential for the poet. The term suggests a boundless field of images, yes, but what to do with those images? St…
Beauty and Fiends: An Interview with Victor LaValle
Say It, Say It Any Way You Can
Say It, Say It Any Way You Can* Vievee Francis (bio) He hit her in the back of the head. Truth—finds its own coarse measureNot long out of diapers I wore purple hot pants danced a funky chicken There was the boogaloo and my aunt's wig that went over her hair I knew men even then I had uncles And a father We jumped high in the living room our lives a quick-stepWhen I held her in my arms did I do any good? She was hip too cool a Saturday night ciga…
The Venerable Fisherman Speaks Again of His Days
The Venerable Fisherman Speaks Again of His Days* Vievee Francis (bio) To fish to knowtheir mouthsthe shimmering fleshthe thrash within the netflick of knife fleck of scales Who can smile looking back? Once I was a fishermana manof the water blood-soaked deck and slickerof the mud and its secret pocketsof the water and what catches the light below water that cools the skina manof the rivulet and the rivedbelly pouring out its quick life I look ov…
Marshalling Muses: Notes Toward the Fortitude of Craft
Smoke Under the Bale
Smoke Under the Bale Vievee Francis (bio) My story – hieroglyphics of scuff and blister. How can you know me? Tin and bridle, neigh and crocker sack. My gandy-song – this blue-buzz of flies. Sugar from your palm? No. Give me your fingers. Under this hairshirt steams the vocabulary of the flesh, crosshatched and scarred into meaning. [End Page 110] Vievee Francis Vievee Francis, a native of Texas, is author of Blue-Tail Fly (Wayne State University…
Still Life with Summer Sausage, a Blade, and No Blood (East Texas, 198)
Still Life with Summer Sausage, a Blade, and No Blood (East Texas, 198_) Vievee Francis (bio) I remember, we walked (we didn’t walk) from the farmhouse to the store in Palestine, (we drove the truck, got out, went in) Texas. The storefronts hadn’t changed since my father was a child. He grabbed saltines from the bin (he bought a box) and he bought some sausage. We walked (yes, then we walked) around town as we ate (he shared). He gave me some sum…
Amarillo (1971)
Amarillo (1971) Vievee Francis (bio) Inland where no seagulls circled, no sea, but storms of dust and dust, the heartland, mouthless heart of thistles, and waves of sun, of salt, and meals of fish in their cans of oil, every surface boiled to rust. Dusk brought howls, the trickster gods, whom cowboys shot and then impaled. A scruff of scarecrows lined the fence-posts, coyotes with their lolling miens, their smiles now fixed as any man’s. Sons, so…
Horse in the Dark
Horse in the Dark Vievee Francis (bio) Brown as a mule, I stomped through the flocking geese who thought themselves swans – but a mule knows its opposite and so did I. They were no swans. A horse can be broken by such beauty. A horse may follow it down a slope that will slice its hooves. Beauty, like a restless man in a tall hat, a wandering boy with teeth white as if he had never known meat, the score of water over stones – I leapt up for the ra…
Emmett, I Said Wait
On August 28, 1955, Emmett Till, a fourteen year old black Chicagoan visiting relatives in Mississippi, was kidnapped and murdered by two white men for allegedly being fresh with a white woman. The photo of his crushed head in its casket was seen around the nation
No prominent works on this page.
Emmett, I Said Wait
On August 28, 1955, Emmett Till, a fourteen year old black Chicagoan visiting relatives in Mississippi, was kidnapped and murdered by two white men for allegedly being fresh with a white woman. The photo of his crushed head in its casket was seen around the nation
Smoke Under the Bale
Smoke Under the Bale Vievee Francis (bio) My story – hieroglyphics of scuff and blister. How can you know me? Tin and bridle, neigh and crocker sack. My gandy-song – this blue-buzz of flies. Sugar from your palm? No. Give me your fingers. Under this hairshirt steams the vocabulary of the flesh, crosshatched and scarred into meaning. [End Page 110] Vievee Francis Vievee Francis, a native of Texas, is author of Blue-Tail Fly (Wayne State University…
Still Life with Summer Sausage, a Blade, and No Blood (East Texas, 198)
Still Life with Summer Sausage, a Blade, and No Blood (East Texas, 198_) Vievee Francis (bio) I remember, we walked (we didn’t walk) from the farmhouse to the store in Palestine, (we drove the truck, got out, went in) Texas. The storefronts hadn’t changed since my father was a child. He grabbed saltines from the bin (he bought a box) and he bought some sausage. We walked (yes, then we walked) around town as we ate (he shared). He gave me some sum…
Amarillo (1971)
Amarillo (1971) Vievee Francis (bio) Inland where no seagulls circled, no sea, but storms of dust and dust, the heartland, mouthless heart of thistles, and waves of sun, of salt, and meals of fish in their cans of oil, every surface boiled to rust. Dusk brought howls, the trickster gods, whom cowboys shot and then impaled. A scruff of scarecrows lined the fence-posts, coyotes with their lolling miens, their smiles now fixed as any man’s. Sons, so…
Horse in the Dark
Horse in the Dark Vievee Francis (bio) Brown as a mule, I stomped through the flocking geese who thought themselves swans – but a mule knows its opposite and so did I. They were no swans. A horse can be broken by such beauty. A horse may follow it down a slope that will slice its hooves. Beauty, like a restless man in a tall hat, a wandering boy with teeth white as if he had never known meat, the score of water over stones – I leapt up for the ra…
Beauty and Fiends: An Interview with Victor LaValle
Say It, Say It Any Way You Can
Say It, Say It Any Way You Can* Vievee Francis (bio) He hit her in the back of the head. Truth—finds its own coarse measureNot long out of diapers I wore purple hot pants danced a funky chicken There was the boogaloo and my aunt's wig that went over her hair I knew men even then I had uncles And a father We jumped high in the living room our lives a quick-stepWhen I held her in my arms did I do any good? She was hip too cool a Saturday night ciga…
The Venerable Fisherman Speaks Again of His Days
The Venerable Fisherman Speaks Again of His Days* Vievee Francis (bio) To fish to knowtheir mouthsthe shimmering fleshthe thrash within the netflick of knife fleck of scales Who can smile looking back? Once I was a fishermana manof the water blood-soaked deck and slickerof the mud and its secret pocketsof the water and what catches the light below water that cools the skina manof the rivulet and the rivedbelly pouring out its quick life I look ov…
Marshalling Muses: Notes Toward the Fortitude of Craft
Beyond Description: Ekphrasis and the Expanding Lens
Beyond DescriptionEkphrasis and the Expanding Lens Vievee Francis (bio) Tell us, Dutch painters, what will happen When the apple is peeled, when the silk dims, when all the colours grow cold. Tell us what darkness is. —Adam Zagajewski, “Dutch Painters” I Ekphrasis, even if simply defined as a literary response to visual art, is rich in potential for the poet. The term suggests a boundless field of images, yes, but what to do with those images? St…
Necessary Crossings: Bridge, Flux, and Raft at “Translations” the 2011 Callaloo Conference
Necessary CrossingsBridge, Flux, and Raft at “Translations” the 2011 Callaloo Conference Vievee Francis (bio) Translatability is an essential quality of certain works . . . it means rather that a specific significance inherent in the original manifests itself in its translatability. —Walter Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator” trans. Hannah Arendt And this doesn’t answer the question of translatability. It is a circular assertion. If it is tran…
Interview with Jide Aje
Interview with Jide Aje* Vievee Francis (bio) Francis: I've seen your early work. What were the motivating factors around your shift from representational art to abstraction? Aje: I really don't know. I think it was just time. The representational work came mostly as a result of the studio practice I had while in school and immediately after school. Much of the work in school was representation—life drawing, portrait drawing, composition, and so …
Risk and the Sublime: Pushing the Personal Limit at the 2012 Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop
Risk and the SublimePushing the Personal Limit at the 2012 Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop Vievee Francis (bio) In the well of my throat everything I wanted to say was dangerous. —James Allen Hall I don’t trust beauty anymore. —Reginald Shepherd I surprised myself during this summer’s 2012 Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop at Brown University. It is not unusual for a workshop participant, while in the throes of critique and study, to find the…
Mutuality and Startlement: Love at the 2012 Callaloo Conference at Princeton
A Kind of Emancipation: After Kara Walker
A Kind of EmancipationAfter Kara Walker Vievee Francis (bio) The swallows exploded from your chest.How many? How many?One then another, every sorrow wingedand seeking an invitation, taking its place in your breast, crowdedalong the lung’s limbs, those barreled ribs. There was no room,but they kept coming. You couldn’t keep your mouth shut,so more, then more sought that grotto, small necksof despair bent on entering. And what was it they wanted?Wh…
Toward Breakthrough: Fool's Gold, Quicksilver, and the Insistence of Passion
Toward BreakthroughFool’s Gold, Quicksilver, and the Insistence of Passion Vievee Francis (bio) Like patience, passion comes from the same Latin root: pati. It does not mean to flow with exuberance. It means to suffer. —Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves There is scarcely any passion without struggle. —Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays Or perhaps Mandela puts it better for our purposes, having said, There is no passion to be f…
Photographs
The Keening
The Keening Vievee Francis (bio) swells the moon. And the eyes that look to it.And the ears that hear it move over and betweenevery living thing. That move through every dead one.When stabbed, if stabbed more than once, a thresholdis reached. The point of no return. A horizonthat holds no other horizon. The pain keeps.But the blood flows out wending its way as waterso salted finds its level. The sound of the wound like the soundof the wounds. Con…
Callaloo and the Creative Writing Workshop
Callaloo and the Creative Writing Workshop* A.H. Jerriod Avant (bio), Gregory Pardlo (bio), Vievee Francis (bio), Ravi Howard (bio), Helen Elaine Lee (bio), Desiree Bailey (bio), Jeremy M. Clark (bio), Ama Codjoe (bio), and Jonterri Gadson (bio) AVANT: Offering workshops across the Black Diaspora, the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop is held at Brown University in Providence, RI, University of West Indies in Cave Hill, and the University of Oxf…
The Future of Callaloo: A Round Table
The Future of CallalooA Round Table* Dagmawi Woubshet (bio), Robert Reid-Pharr (bio), LeRonn P. Brooks (bio), Hermine Pinson (bio), Jean-Paul Rocchi (bio), Hortense Spillers (bio), Vievee Francis (bio), Ebony Bailey (bio), and Sonya Posmentier (bio) WOUBSHET: Welcome to the last session of this conference and celebration of Callaloo’s 40th anniversary. The panel is called “The Future of Callaloo: A Round Table.” If you are looking at the program,…
On Callaloo as a Forty-Year-Old Project
On Callaloo as a Forty-Year-Old Project* Margo Natalie Crawford (bio), Vievee Francis (bio), and LeRonn P. Brooks (bio) These remarks were given at the opening of the Callaloo Conference at Oxford University celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Callaloo. CRAWFORD: Welcome, everyone. We want to begin today with three speakers who will discuss the significance of the occasion, and I am honored to be the first speaker. I’m Margo Crawford, professor o…
Callaloo and Creative Writing
Callaloo and Creative Writing* Jacinda Townsend (bio), Vievee Francis (bio), Gregory Pardlo (bio), John McCluskey Jr. (bio), Ishion Hutchinson (bio), Joshua Bennett (bio), AH Jerriod Avant (bio), Stacy Parker Le Melle (bio), and Sebastian Matthews (bio) TOWNSEND: Hi and welcome to the panel Callaloo and Creative Writing. In 1997, Dr. Rowell formed the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop. The workshop was first mounted at HBCUs like Morehouse, Spel…
Callaloo: A Forum for Academics and Creative Writers
Callaloo: A Forum for Academics and Creative Writers* Margo Natalie Crawford (bio), Vievee Francis (bio), Joshua Bennett (bio), Dagmawi Woubshet (bio), and Jeremy M. Clark (bio) Brent Hayes Edwards was also a presenter on this panel. He provided Callaloo with an essay version of his remarks (see pgs. 67–71 in this issue). CRAWFORD: I am Margo Crawford and I am at Cornell University. I’m going to start today with a real focus on Charles Rowell’s i…
In Voluntary Solitude: An Interview with Charles Henry Rowell
Art (19 works) · Literature (14 works) · Art history (13 works) · History (11 works) · Poetry (9 works) · Visual arts (8 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Aesthetics (5 works)