Frances Ragsdale Brock, 92, of Murfreesboro, died peacefully on November 12, 2025. She was the beloved mother of five children: Allison Pierce, Cheryl Manier (Tom Hutt), and Adrienne Johnson (Larry Johnson), of Murfreesboro, TN, and Geoffrey Brock (Padma Viswanathan) and Brantley Brock (Neome Brock), of Fayetteville, AR. She was predeceased by her husband, Lewis Kingsley Moore.

Born in Dallas, Texas, on December 19, 1932, to Bailey and Minnie Eva Ragsdale, she grew up in East Texas and later attended Emory University and Florida State University, from which she received her PhD in Creative Writing in 1984. She worked for many years as an editor at Florida State University, and after retirement she traveled widely, especially in Europe, but also in Asia and North Africa.

Frances loved traveling, looking at art, writing poetry, and spending time with her children. She was good-natured and was always quick to smile and laugh. She also loved British mysteries, true crime shows, and ice cream. She wasn't fond of small talk or most vegetables, and she hated cooking.

She published numerous poems in literary journals, and in her later years she composed hundreds and hundreds of rhyming four-line poems, full of wit and wisdom, about subjects such as love, loneliness, and the imminence of death. Sometimes sad, often funny, occasionally vulgar, they are always surprising and delightful. She would have appreciated an obituary with some humor and some poetry, so here are three of her quatrains about dying:

THE CORRIDOR

I'm heading down the corridor

That leads each mortal to her death.

But I'll skip and laugh and dance

Until I'm out of breath.

WHAT WE DIDN'T KNOW

She lay quietly,

About to end her time.

What we didn't know:

She was composing poems that rhyme.

GOODWILL

If I should die before I wake,

All my treasures you're free to take.

And if for you they do not sing,

Goodwill takes almost anything.

The great tragedy of her life was the death of her beloved father, who was killed in action in World War II when she was 11. She never quite got over that, and she visited his grave in Italy several times.

Frances is also survived by six grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. She will be forever missed; we were lucky to have so many years with her. There will be no service.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to The Arkansas International Literary Magazine, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) literary arts organization, at https://www.arkint.org/store/support