. 7c. Ruins on the Somme: a lost war poet rediscovered

Of the many thousands of times that I have drawn a dusty nondescript book from a poorly-lit shelf in a used-bookstore during the past forty years, only once can I claim to have pulled down and opened an entirely unknown classic of American literature.  Not that I recognized it as such at the time.  Nor even now, on the eve of its re-publication by [...]

Read Full Post »

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 [...]

Read Full Post »