. 7. From the Spoon to the Marne: poems of my grandfather’s war

Of the thirty-odd poems located along the Spoon River, perhaps a third center around the figure of my German grandfather, and of those a good many concern his experience in the First World War and the lingering effects of that experience once he had returned. The following poem, a narrative in blank verse, portrays my [...]

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. 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 [...]

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