The first four chapters of a biography of the poet Jasper Walter Griffin. They cover the first thirty years of his life, including Griffin's fatherless childhood in rural South Carolina, his imperious grandmother, his time at Gordon Military School (now Gordon College) in Barnesville, Ga., his tumultuous time in the Army in the U.S. and France, his brushes with the law, and a decade of defiance and anger, of various jobs from bellhop on Nantucket Island to carnival barker in Florida to shady home-improvement contract salesman, and of vagabonding around the U.S. as he searched for what he calls 'the essence of the core of reality. ' Eventually named the Georgia Council for the Arts' only Master Poet-in-Residence and published in more than 400 literary journals and magazines in the U.S., Canada, and Europe, Griffin has been writing poetry for more than half a century. It has been his salvation, his sanity, his sine qua non. This text describes incidents and people in Griffin's life that influenced the development of his character and his art.
","abstract_html":"<p>The first four chapters of a biography of the poet Jasper Walter Griffin. They cover the first thirty years of his life, including Griffin's fatherless childhood in rural South Carolina, his imperious grandmother, his time at Gordon Military School (now Gordon College) in Barnesville, Ga., his tumultuous time in the Army in the U.S. and France, his brushes with the law, and a decade of defiance and anger, of various jobs from bellhop on Nantucket Island to carnival barker in Florida to shady home-improvement contract salesman, and of vagabonding around the U.S. as he searched for what he calls 'the essence of the core of reality. ' Eventually named the Georgia Council for the Arts' only Master Poet-in-Residence and published in more than 400 literary journals and magazines in the U.S., Canada, and Europe, Griffin has been writing poetry for more than half a century. It has been his salvation, his sanity, his sine qua non. This text describes incidents and people in Griffin's life that influenced the development of his character and his art.</p>","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Stevens, Lawrence Sterne"],"institution":null,"degree_name":"Master of Arts in Professional Writing (MAPW)","degree_level":"Thesis","degree_discipline":"English","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Dr. Laura Dabundo","Dr. Margaret Walters"],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2010,"date_issued":"2010-04-01T07:00:00Z","date_published":"2010-04-01T07:00:00Z","updated_at":"2026-07-24T02:42:33Z","subjects":["biography","american poets","American Literature"],"languages":[],"rights":[],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/etd/225","outbound_label":"Repository record","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Dr. Laura Dabundo","Dr. Margaret Walters"]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Stevens, Lawrence Sterne"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date.available","label":"Dc Date Available","values":["2025-05-06T07:00:00Z"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["English"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_level","label":"Degree Level","values":["Thesis"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["Master of Arts in Professional Writing (MAPW)"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["biography","american poets","American Literature"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/etd/225"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description.abstract","label":"Abstract","values":["The first four chapters of a biography of the poet Jasper Walter Griffin. They cover the first thirty years of his life, including Griffin's fatherless childhood in rural South Carolina, his imperious grandmother, his time at Gordon Military School (now Gordon College) in Barnesville, Ga., his tumultuous time in the Army in the U.S. and France, his brushes with the law, and a decade of defiance and anger, of various jobs from bellhop on Nantucket Island to carnival barker in Florida to shady home-improvement contract salesman, and of vagabonding around the U.S. as he searched for what he calls 'the essence of the core of reality. ' Eventually named the Georgia Council for the Arts' only Master Poet-in-Residence and published in more than 400 literary journals and magazines in the U.S., Canada, and Europe, Griffin has been writing poetry for more than half a century. It has been his salvation, his sanity, his sine qua non. This text describes incidents and people in Griffin's life that influenced the development of his character and his art.
"]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Write Poetry: A Biography of American Poet Walter Griffin"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:contributor":["Dr. Laura Dabundo","Dr. Margaret Walters"],"dc:creator":["Stevens, Lawrence Sterne"],"dc:date.available":["2025-05-06T07:00:00Z"],"dc:description.abstract":["The first four chapters of a biography of the poet Jasper Walter Griffin. They cover the first thirty years of his life, including Griffin's fatherless childhood in rural South Carolina, his imperious grandmother, his time at Gordon Military School (now Gordon College) in Barnesville, Ga., his tumultuous time in the Army in the U.S. and France, his brushes with the law, and a decade of defiance and anger, of various jobs from bellhop on Nantucket Island to carnival barker in Florida to shady home-improvement contract salesman, and of vagabonding around the U.S. as he searched for what he calls 'the essence of the core of reality. ' Eventually named the Georgia Council for the Arts' only Master Poet-in-Residence and published in more than 400 literary journals and magazines in the U.S., Canada, and Europe, Griffin has been writing poetry for more than half a century. It has been his salvation, his sanity, his sine qua non. This text describes incidents and people in Griffin's life that influenced the development of his character and his art.
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