US Poet Laureate faces Darth Vader cops

In the current online Opinion Section of the New York Times Sunday Review the 70 year old former American Poet Laureate and Professor of Poetics Robert Hass writes about the day he faced a line of "Alamada County deputy sheriffs in Darth Vader gear".

"The description for what I tried to do is 'remonstrate'," explains Hass who saw his wife "knocked down" by a deputy at a recent University of California demonstration.

"I screamed at the deputy, 'You just knocked down my wife for Christ's sake!' " he said.

For voicing his troubles the septuagenarian Professor of Poetics and former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets was "whacked hard in the ribs twice and once across the forearm".

According to Hass two of his colleagues at the demonstration were also victims of Darth Vader justice.

Celeste Langon, a Wordsworth scholar, was "dragged across the grass by her hair" and poet Geoffrey O'Brien "had a broken rib," said Hass.

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