. 8. Along the stripling Thames: in search of the Scholar Gipsy

As mentioned in the section “literary nationalism” (‘the river ran red: literary wars’), the so-called ‘poetry wars’ of the early ’90s left me in a state of considerable expasperation for many reasons, one of which was the charge that to write in rhyme and meter was to place oneself in a relationship of indentured servitude [...]

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11. The river ran red: poetry wars

early skirmishes at Rockford College Almost from the beginning, poetry for me was a matter of contention.  The fight began before I had shown a poem to anyone.  I had read poetry seriously for several years in solitude, then thought to give my reading some structure and weight with a year or two of formal [...]

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