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Collected Poems

Edward Dorn

Edited by Jennifer Dunbar Dorn

Foreword by Jennifer Dunbar Dorn

Collected Poems by Edward Dorn
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Categories: 20th Century, American
Imprint: Carcanet Poetry
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Available as:
Paperback (1022 pages)
(Pub. Nov 2012)
9781847771261
£40.00 £36.00
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  • Author
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  • Reviews
  • For the first time the vast, experimental totality of Gunslinger poet Edward Dorn’s work is collected in a single volume. After studying with Charles Olson at Black Mountain College, Dorn took on the American West, developing an unmistakeable voice, ‘as evocative as a lonesome train whistle in the night’. Olson praised his ‘Shakespearean ear for syllables’. Taking his bearings from Pound and Williams, he found his own way, a pioneer in the old American way. “From near the beginning I have known my work to be theoretical in nature and poetic by virtue of its inherent tone.” Peter Ackroyd considers him ‘the only plausible, political poet in America […] one of the masters of our contemporary language.’ If Gunslinger is his major poem, the work that anticipates and surrounds it, wonderfully resourceful in tone and idiom, puts him on an equal footing with his masters.

    The book includes an introduction by Jennifer Dorn, the poet’s widow, an appreciation by J.H. Prynne and an afterword by Amiri Baraka.

    Cover Image: Philip Behymer, Edward Dorn. Acrylic on Canvas. 42" x 36". 1982 (photo: Jennifer Dunbar Dorn)

    Edited with a preface by Jennifer Dunbar Dorn, with Justin Katko, Reitha Pattison and Kyle Waugh
    Preface by Jennifer Dunbar Dorn    xxv

    EARLY POEMS (1954–1960)
    Grasses    5
    Relics from a Polar Cairn    5
    Litany for Yellow Lamp    7
    Store Scene    8
    The Revival    9
    Lines from a Sitting Position    9
    The Rick of Green Wood    10
    The Hide of My Mother    11
    When the Fairies    17
    A Stately Dance    18
    For Ray (the 6th)    19
    The 7th    20

    THE NEWLY FALLEN (1961)
    Geranium    23
    The Sparrow Sky    24
    3 Farm Poems
        1. The war    25
        2. The touch    26
        3. Goodbye to the Illinois    26
    The Open Road    27
    The Song    30
    Sousa    31
    The Biggest Killing    35
    The Top List    38
    The Prisoner of Bellefonte (pa)    39
    Like a Message on Sunday    40
    Our Camp    41
    The Argument Is    42
    A Country Song    43
    The Common Lot    47
    Prayers for the People of the World    48
    For a Man    48
    And Thus    49
    There was a Change    50
    If it should ever come    51

    UNCOLLECTED POEMS (1961–1964)
    Nature their passing bell: an atonement    55
    An Inauguration Poem    55
    An Africa Ode    57
    An Address for the First Woman to Face Death in Havana    57
    An Old Love    60
    The poet lectures famous potatoes    60
    Overture to I    61
    The Mountains    62
    [Pocatello is black]    63

    HANDS UP! (1964)
    Vaquero    67
    The Deer’s Eye the Hunter’s Nose    67
    Wagon Wheels    68
    The Sea Corner, of the Eye    69
    Trail Creek, Aug. 11, the Reason of Higher Powers    70
    Home on the Range, February, 1962    72
    Time to Burn    73
    On the Debt My Mother Owed to Sears Roebuck    74
    Obituary    75
    The Tepee at Tomah    77
    Death While Journeying    80
    Ledyard: The Exhaustion of Sheer Distance    82
    Los Mineros    85
    In the Morning    86
    The Land Below    87
    Are They Dancing    104
    Hawthorne, End of March, 1962    104
    The Song is Ended    105
    In My Youth I Was a Tireless Dancer    106
    The Pronouncement    106
    A Too Hopefully Bold Measure    107
    The Air of June Sings    109
    The Encounter    110
    Hemlocks    110
    Time Blonde    111
    Unlike Music    112
    Oh Don’t Ask why    113
    A Fate of Unannounced Years    115
    Hands Up    116

        FROM GLOUCESTER OUT (1964)    119

        NINE SONGS (1965)    127

    GEOGRAPHY (1965)
    Song: The astronauts    137
    The problem of the poem for my daughter, left unsolved    138
    A letter, in the meantime, not to be mailed, tonight    145
    Inauguration poem #2    147
    West of Moab    151
    Idaho Out    153
    Six views from the same window of the Northside Grocery    168
    Daffodil song    171
    Song [my wife is lovely]    171
    Love song [for Lucia]    172
    Love song [for Cathy]    172
    A vague love    173
    Another vague love    174
    Song [Oh Gods of my disembarked soul this is sad]    174
    A wild blue, yonder    175
    In the shadow    175
    Song [If the world]    176
    A song [There is a blue sky]    177
    The explanation    177
    Chronicle    178
    Song [So we somewhat stagger together]    179
    Song [Christ of the sparrows Help me!]    180
    Parlor car beer    182
    Poem in five parts    182
    Song [This afternoon was unholy, the sky]    185
    Dark ceiling    186
    This March afternoon    187
    Song: Heat    188
    The reception    188
    Song: We shall refrain from them    190
    The smug never silent guns of the enemy    191
    Fort Hall obituary: A note    192
    Mourning letter, March 29, 1963    193
    Eugene Delacroix says    194
    Song: Venceremos    196
    Dwarfing with chemicals: A promising agricultural technique    198
    The sense comes over me, and the waning light of man by the 1st National Bank    199
    Song: Ritual party in an alley    203
    A luxurious jungle in which    204
    Song: Europa    205
    For the new union dead in Alabama    206

    UNCOLLECTED POEMS (1966)
    My age from a map to illustrate that the reconstructed North Atlantic Continent has an essential Structural Unity by F.J. Fitch    211
    A provisional fragment, congested with 3 titles    212
    The World Box-score Cup of 1966    214

    THE NORTH ATLANTIC TURBINE (1967)
    Thesis    233
    The first note (from London    234
    England, its latitude and some of its conditions, the seriousness
    of ghosts    236
    A Theory of Truth The North Atlantic Turbine    240
    Oxford
        Part I. Fornication    249
        Part II. In Town    252
        Part III. Comforted by Limestone    252
    Part IV. An Epistolary Comment: knowing none of it accurately, the world can be surveyed    253
        Part V. Whit Sunday    259
        Part VI. Of the “English” Colonies    264
    On the Nature of Communication September 7, 1966    269
    Wait by the door awhile Death, there are others    270
    A morning to remember or, E pluribus unum    276
    A Notation on the evening of November 27, 1966    277
    An idle visitation    279
    Song [Again, I am made the occurrence]    282
    The Sundering U.P. Tracks    283

    UNCOLLECTED POEMS (1968–1969)
    To Tom Pickard and the Newcastle Brown Beer Revolutionaries    287
    Song [Mydew   my  meadow]    289
    This Is the Way I Hear the Momentum    289
    The Midwest is that Space Between the Buffalo Statler and the
    Lawrence Eldridge    291
    Notice how a vaster Crystal of Lives comes around    294
    The Cosmology of Finding Your Place    295
    [It was in a dream]    297

        TWENTY-FOUR LOVE SONGS (1969)    303

        SONGS: SET TWO—A SHORT COUNT (1970)    319

    UNCOLLECTED POEMS (1971–1974)
    An Exercise    331
    Osawatomie    334
    Spectrum Breakdown: A Microbook A Microbook    339
    Door County—South Dakota Time (with Jennifer Dunbar)
    Rowly Bay    341
    D. County aug 19th    342
    Salty Story by Lac Michigan    342
    Cove    342
    Wisconsin Gives Rise to a German Idea    342
    In a Dream    342
    The Eight-Day Reply    343
    An Island Projected From the MindBooth Into the Off Shore
    Waters of the Michigan Side, Complete with Palms and
    Coconut-happy Inhabitants    343
    What a Man He Thought of Everything    344
    On the Edge of the Badlands    344
    An Impertinent Change    344
    How Far are you willing to go?    345
    The Naumans    345
    Pure Description    345
    The Poem Called Alexander Hamilton    346
    The Kultchural Exchange    347
    an oecological prophecy    350
    Heavy Acquisition    352
    Easy’s Best    353
    [Seven Poems from Tens]
        [RAW   WAR]    354
        Los Caballos Cimarrones    354
        Coinage    354
        Two-part Poem (with Kid    354
        Indicative    355
        The Loathesome Cowboys    355
        Curved Glass    355
    The Poet Lets His Tongue Hang Down    356
    Executioner, stay thy cold blade    358
    The Octopus Thinks with Its Arms    359
    The History of Futures    359
    The Stripping of the River    361
    Niedecker    361
    [Mesozoic Landscape]    362
    [green poems]    363

    RECOLLECTIONS OF GRAN APACHERÍA (1974)
    First Lines    367
    [It is bright to recollect]    368
    [The first law of the desert]    368
    [The children of both sexes]    368
    [They are of many clans]    368
    Victorio    369
    Nana & Victorio    369
    Dress for War    370
    Bounty Time    370
    The Provoking Figure of the Horsewoman    371
    Geronimo    371
    Juh & Geronimo    372
    Nanay    372
    [When Geronimo was in Washington for the Inauguration ...]    373
    Fifteen Hundred Tons of Hay @ 1¢ per Pound    373
    The Moving, Invisible Spectre of the Phratry on the Traitor Peaches    374
    A Period Portrait of Sympathy    375
    [When the Boundary Commission]    375
    Assorted Compliments    376
    Reservations    376
    Creation    379
    The Whole European Distinction    381
    Personum    381
    [The original monuments of perception]    382
    [Out of the Sunset movement]    382
    [So    The infant is bound]    382
    [By the time they are let out]    383
    The Slipping of the Wheel    383
    [Gen. Miles imagined]    384
    Immured in Florida
    La Máquina a Houston    384

    GUNSLINGER (1968–1975)
    Book I (1968)    389
    Book II (1969)    431
    The Cycle (1971)    475
    Book III (1972)    499
    Book IIII (1975)    531
        Prolegomenon    533

    MANCHESTER SQUARE (with Jennifer Dunbar) (1975)
    Home Again    591
    Manchester Square
    Autumn    591
    Winter    592
    Spring    592
    Bond Street Stash    592
    Grosvenor Square    593
    Mount Street    593
    Audley    594
    St. Christopher’s Place    594
    Carlos Place    595
    Backstreet Society    596
    Dear Herbie    597
    Manchester Square [Our friends portray the time here]    597
    HELLO, LA JOLLA (1978)
    PREFACE    599
    A for Ism    599
    Suppertime Down South    601
    Shifting an Interference with Nature to a Scientific Obstruction    601
    Del Mar    602
    Wet Cake    602
    What Will Be Historically Durable    603
    The Upwardly Mobile, and the Backs which Provide the Ladder    603
    Chicken Relativity    604
    An Opinion on a Matter of Public Safety    604
    Beyond the Air Bag    604
    Beware the Plural of Usual    605
    The Blue and the Green: Drugs and the Market    605
    You’re Supposed to Move Your Head, Not Your Eyes    606
    The Sociology of Games    607
    In Defense of Pure Poetry    607
    How Can One Not Blush to Accept Pay For Defending the Country    607
    ALASKA: in Two Parts    608

    Flywheel Programs
    Distraction Control    612
    Spuw Slang    612
    Period Westerns    612
    Matchbook Covers I’ll Probably Never Publish    613
    On the Other Hand    613
    Light & Regularity    613
    On Stooping for Money    614
    Category A Footnote    614
    The Russian Quote    614
    The Nature of the Phone    614
    Routine    615
    The Las Tycoon (A Review    615
    Stuff the Voice-Print    615
    Rauschenberg’s Untitled (Early Egyptian Series    615
    In Which We Are Paid the Dubious Political Compliment of
    Opposing Messages    616
    Reapportionment of the Ceegar    616
    The Sanders Quote    616
    Claim Inspection    617
    A Tour of the Capital    617
    A Thorobred Named Supreme Act    617
    Sirius in January    617
    The Broughton Quote    617
    A Short Study of Death    618
    Upping the Ante on Detente    618

    Among the Draperies of Definition
    The Cobbett Quote    618
    Correct usages of some words widely misused or abused in modern conversation & poetry    618
    The Baron Macaulay Quote    621
    An Unusual Accounting Treatment    621
    What Is This Thing Called Contemplation    622
    Lending a Hand to the Inanimate    623

    1 0 1: One O one, that great Zero Resting eternally between parallels
    A View, From 101    624
    [Easy, Oakland]    624
    Here and Now    625
    Inspection    625
    Don’t Get Your Hopes Up    625
    A Sense of Place    626
    People of Earth    626
    Man of Distinction    626
    An Unremote Recombinant    626
    The Burr Quote    627
    2 Gulls Sittin On the Richmond Bridge    627
    Esperanto    627
    Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream, A Variation for Dr. Christian Barnard    628
    The Gadsden Purchase Revisited    628
    If Somebody Asks You Where You Come From Remember    629
    A Variation on Vallejo’s #III    629
    Palms, Victory, Triumph, Excellence    630
    Sunset    630
        
    YELLOW LOLA, FORMERLY TITLED JAPANESE NEON
    (HELLO, LA JOLLA, BOOK II) (1980)
    Note 1: The Address    633
    Note 2: The Procedure    633
    Tuesday 2 March 1976: Weather Report    633
    [Environmental carcinogens]    633
    (101) [cultural idea imbalanced]    634
    The Rezanov film script    634
    [Alaska wants to be a nation]    634
    Loose goose, tight shoes & cold igloos    634
    Political?    635
    A Discovery    635
    101 [he was sidetracked]    635
    The Fence, or the Bauhaus Outhouse    636
    Proposition 13    636
    [Sometime, the scent of fear sweeps over us]    636
    Public Notice    636
    Trees    637
    [A Pontificatory use of the art]    637
    the boundary condition    637
    group analysis    637
    Living with the enemy    638
    The metric system    638
    [next year will be the 100th]    638
    [Recycling is an after-work recreation]    639
    [Recycling has grown to be]    639
    Bumpersticker    639
    [the family is]    639
    Rancho Canaille, or Propositions for Living with the metaphor
    of Cancer    640
    Hall of Flowers    640
    Suctorial    640   
    gnawed tongues    640
    Torture    641
    The Sonoma County Line: They always had a dirty sink    641
    Tortured    641
    [the sky is fixed]    641
    The Death of Howard Hughes    642
    Hughes    642
    Rediform: 30 gal. water from corp. yd.    642
    Super    642
    In defense of Quality    643
    22 January    643
    One of the increasingly urgent searches in writing today is to find
    an adequate exclamation    643
    The Evolution of Energy from Tennessee to Cumbria    644
    Wanted    645
    Manzanita    645
    [I see a lot of people]    645
    Jimtown    646
    Night Watchman, look to my flashlight    646
    It is dangerous to be alive    646
    101 [numbers are the only entities]    646
    [those hunchbacks out back have a lot of crust]    647
    Evolution    647
    Grammatical problem    647
    Eternal Vigilance (AM 101)    647
    The Word (20 January 1977)    648
    the script, but not necessarily the cure    648
    Trailers    648
    People who call in are sick    648
    Post ’76    649
    Useful    649
    [Alaska is]    649
    The Plague: just another Metaphysical question    649
    The Whiner, Obnoxious as ever, at latest report    650
    Books I have read while Driving    650
    101 [The Poet must always]    650
    The Rape of Deer Creek as it passed thru Lot ? Section etc. Plat ? etc.
    by a hominid named Miller, a former resident of mean local
    reputation    651
    [Happiness is a violent emotion]    651
    [I wouldn’t go back for god’s foot]    651
    [Humanity divides neatly]    651
    [It is said poetry audiences]    652
    [One must not be guilty]    652
    [It’s an undeniable law]    652
    At Jack Spicer’s Bar    652
    Television & Children    653
    [“one must not be unkind”]    653
    [I don’t give a dog turd]    653
    Manzanita (II)    654
    A protest against still another empty-minded choice    654
    Another tobacco poem    655
    The intellection of patterns    655
    [I have an excellent, if unconventional, memory]    655
    After-effects of WWII: Washington Square, San Francisco 1977    656
    [I can believe Panama is the most]    656
    [1 Billion Chinese are telling me]    656
    [A reminder to the folks]    656
    Success?    657
    The Dee Young Quote (in Boulder)    657
    [now & then there is a chance]    657
    The song of the vulgar boatmen    657
    [At least one increase has maintained itself]    658
    [The caucasian horde completes]    658
    Alaska Revisited    658
    Not so bad after all    658
    A question of appetite    659
    Colorado    659
    Whole Cars, full of dogs    659
    Au Barre, in The Gold Hill Inn    659
    a poem w/a french sound    659
    I wish they could all be california cars    660
    “The Party”    660
    2nd Chautauqua    661
    3rd Chautauqua    661
    4th Chautauqua    661
    5th Chautauqua    662
    La Culpa    662
    Advice revised    662
    The Bible    662
    The Human Truck    663

    CAPTAIN JACK’S CHAPS OR HOUSTON/MLA (1983)
    Essential Introductory Matter    667
    DEPLANING, & getting learnt    669
    A Piece of Advice: It is Far Better to Copter in, but Even That Way
    You Can Lose a Blade    670
    At the Cowboy Panel    671
    GOD CREATES MAN!    672
    Sunday Morning in the Murdered Territories    673
    Maximum Ostentation    673
    Some More Ostentation    676
    Adios to Ostentation    677
    The Triumph of the Hominids    678
    Hotel Harley Down by the Bayou, As Dick prepares for New York
    And I turn my thoughts homeward.    679

    ABHORRENCES: A CHRONICLE OF THE EIGHTIES (1990)
    ABHORRENCES: Baseline Vocabulary introduced by the
    Rawhide Era    683
    [Print the invasion money]    684
    [one bullet]    684
    [Every Man]    684
    Never Lose an Enemy, if you can help it    684
    Los Ochentas    685
    The Protestant View:    685
    Generic Eighties    685
    While You’re at it    685
    Wait Till the Christians Hear About This!    686
    Not Good, but Getting Better: dog fights on the increase in Denver.    686
    Apocryphal or not ...    687
    The Vulgarity of Positive Reinforcement or Putting Away
    Childish Things    687
    Casting the First Puffball    688
    A Decision Taken with Little Thought and Even Less Pain    688
    Flatland    689
    Lemma Japonaise    689
    Rough Passage on I-80    690
    Homo Sap:    695
    Boulder Mundane    695
    World View Solipsized    696
    The Ed Meese Scrolls    696
    Not So Hard Wired, but something to do    696
    Aid(e) Memoire    697
    Smoke & Cinders: Some Thoughts on the Truckers    697
    Touring the Bloated Void    698
    I’ll never apologize again!    698
    Ice is the lead of water’s gold    699
    Recette Economique    699
    Armalite Resolution    699
    Self Criticism    700
    Tuesday was a Fait Accompli, not a Raison d’Etre: an election scare story
        701
    There’s only one natural death, and even that’s Bedcide: For the
    post-mortem amusement of Richard Brautigan    702
    It Could be Anyone    703
    The Price is Right: A Torture Wheel of Fortune    703
    The Wisconsin Hunters to the Chippewas    704
    Worse than Tapeworm    705
    Homage to Karen Carpenter    705
    Products which are absolutely simple to despise in our state    706
    He spits, therefore he is spittle    707
    Novels Somebody With Nothing To Do Should Write    707
    Evaporation as a career    708
    Logical Appointments: or giving the People what they want by way of giving them what they deserve    708
    The Turk    709
    [“Why is wanting to kill Ronald Reagan...”]    709
    Another Springtime in the Rockies (for P.M.    710
    The Calendar Girl at Eddie’s    710
    Weather Report    711
    Something we can all agree on    711
    These Times Are Medieval    712
    Foreign Policy; another cheap import    712
    Pow-Wow in Geneva    712
    I like a Busy View    713
    America, really, No Kidding, the Beautiful.    713
    The crime depends on the judge    714
    Eat All You Want    714
    The Claptrap Nomenklatura of Western Regimes    715
    California usage    715
    Stop Complaining: On not being co-opted    716
    Hate Without Style    716
    Philippine Phenomenology    717
    Lackey stacked upon lackey    717
    By Definition    717
    An Exception for Courtroom Behavior    718
    Barbed Praise [I]    718
    Barbed Praise [II]    718
    An Old-Fashioned Problem: Cundurango won’t help    719
    I’m Clean, how about you?    719
    Why do they tell us what they tell us?    720
    Harvesting Organs: On the Head-Injury Death of a 24 Year Old
    Boy in Vermont    721
    Ode on the Facelifting of the “statue” of Liberty    722
    Aincha sick of ’em?    723
    Welcome Home    724
    Jar Wars II    725
    Proprietary Rights and Patented Germs    725
    Cyndi Lauper    727
    Entropy    727
    Radio Nostalgia    727
    Every example tells a story    728
    On Losing One’s Coolant    728
    America the Buick    728
    Condom mania: the ins and outs    729
    Hi Hype Budgette    730
    The Public Service Message    730
    Gargling Draino    731
    Hazardous Sex (as distinct from “safe sex”)    731
    A Circus of Hokum or how many cookie jars make a bushel    732
    A Coup de Guerre in a Teacup    732
    “An unrecorded act is not one that never took place”    732
    A time to buy and a time to cry    733
    Hand Held Refrigerator    734
    Idle thoughts at the St Marks 20th anniversary reunion    734
    The Differently Abled    734
    The momentum of the excrementum    735
    Off the Waldheim    735
    Some Things Do Change    736
    The Independent Boulder Woman    736
    IBW toenote    738
    Cooking the Corpse    739
    Would You Repeat the Question    739
    Martyrs Opera    740
    Vizutek    740
    Credo Alfredo    741
    All in the name of child-proof caps    741
    A Dispatch from the Front    742
    The Hatch Catch    745
    the hazards of a later era: variation on a theme    745
    Silver’s Up a Nickel    746
    Heart of Copper    747
    So Long Pardner, you’re bound to be better than 1988    747
    Nineteen Eighty Eight Maniac    748
    Life is a Lake of lukewarm pinkish yellow snot    748
    A question seldom asked and never answered    748
    Permission Refused    749
    Recollections of Advice to Whiteguys    749
    Neolojizem    750
    “Handle me lustily ... ere the blood-rush cease”    751
    [“Where there is wealth]    751
    Quatrain Naboko    752
    Motel Superbo    752
    Progress: slow but inexorable    753
    Population Control in Boulder    753
    Stupid as a One way street    754
    Solo Pretendre    754
    Oecological Caution    755
    A Summer Evening in Boulder    755
    Blunt Force Trauma    756
    Don’t just stand there, get something!    757
    Lock the Door    758
    Thou Shalt Not Kill: Oh Yes I Will!    758
    Holy Weenies    759
    Smoke that Cigarette    759
    The re-PUBlicans!!!    760
    The result of a society composed of castaways    762
    The Degeneration of the Greeks    763
    Euphemismo Inc.    764
    Don’t give up, it’s only natural    764
    Rushdie Bumper Sticker    765
    Mediocre Friday    765
    The Sin Casas    766
    Jim Wright    766
    When Values Get Relative, Value Gets Going    767
    Free Market Chinoiserie    768
    Come to SOUTH AMERICA a Continental Theme Park    769
    Routines, Immane proceedings, Handclaps    770
    Panama:    770
    A prayer for the destruction of all their works    771
    The End    772

    THE DENVER LANDING—11 AUG 1993 (1993)
    Prolog    775
    Awful Rumors    776
    The Great Muddy    777
    Up the Platte    778
    The Final Approach to Denland    778

    from WESTWARD HAUT [formerly HI PLANE: A SAGA OF THE CROSSING] (1986–1999)
    El Peru/Cheyenne Milkplane
    Proläg    783
    Aboard the Tan Am with Odin, a Dog of Judgement    784
    Across the Cold Hiss of the Nightflight Odin Enters the Downlink    799
    The Runaway Truck    802
    Phaëthon’s Daughter    802
    Ascending the Platte    804
    Radicals on the Great Plain    806

    from LANGUEDOC VARIORUM:
    A DEFENSE OF HERESY & HERETICS
    [formerly LANGUE D’OC AROUND THE CLOC] (1992–1999)
    Jerusalem    813
    Bogumil    816
    Shoko    821
    TOMÁS TORQUEMADA—first Inquisitor General for all Spanish
    ∏ossessions and Master of the rooting out of disbelievers.    822
    Notes on Béziers: the past as cauchemar    828
    Albi, a Day Trip    832
    Do the Simon de Montfort / Do le Busard    836
    Ten Years in Gaul    837
    Rome    838
    Couvertoirade    839
    On the Question of God’s Tolerance    840
    Quelle Cité!    842
    Millennial Miasma    843
    OH NO! SHOKO!    844
    Aigues Mortes    845
    Avignon—the 2nd Babylonian Captivity    846
    Dusk in Montpellier: a recollection prompted by Sharik, Bulgakov’s
    surgically transformed Dog.    847
    Dismissal    848
    Off-the-Books in Darien    849
    Ah yes, Columbus Day, no mail    850
    Fourteen Ninety Two: thoughts on the Genoan    850
    Modern times à la Plage de Palombaggia    852
    Bonifacio    852
    Paoli    853
    Le Drouot à Metro Richelieu (23 Juin, 1992)    854
    Scarlatina    856
    Petra Kelly—recalling German Green, 1992    856
    Mordecai    857
    Sniper on the Roof: the cheap elimination of heretics    858

    LOW COUPS AND HAUT COUPS (1995–1998)
    How the Confederacy Finally Won the War (the birth of a
    franchise)    863
    The Future as Fatal    863
    Ambrose Bierce Studies the globe    864
    The Traffic Report    864
    Low Coupe Bumper Sticker    864
    No Ideas in Things    864
    HI COO    865
    Early Modern    865
    The Way We Are    865
    No Coup    865
    Way Coup (with the help of T.R.)    866
    Another Modest Proposal    866
    Usurae Usurarum    866
    Peace with Violence    867
    Low Coup, Long Overdue    867
    Slow Coup    867
    Beau Coup    867
    Coups Noirs    868

    ROCKY MOUNTAIN SPINE (1995–1998)
    Montana & Montaner    871
    Denver Upbringing    873
    Leaving Rawlins    875
    Yellowstone    877

    UNCOLLECTED POEMS (1997–1999)
    The pilgrimage, Christmas Day, Jamayca, 1997    881
    The Screwball Crosses the Square    882
    Dunlap ‘tired, alienated’    884
    Methodist child—Slow train through Denver    885
    Open Letter to the Apache Nation    886

    CHEMO SÁBE (2001)
    House Arrest    891
    Sketches from Edgewater    891
    Tribe    893
    The Drugs Are Over-rated    894
    Infusion Day    895
    Chemo du Jour: The Impeachment on Decadron    896
    The Dull Relief of General Pain—Oxycontin, Roxicodone and
    Codeine in General    899
    Denver Dawn: With Ceiling Fan    900
    The Decadron, Tagamit, Benadryl and Taxol Cocktail Party of
    1 March 1999    900
    White Rabbit    902
    Prilosec    904
    Iodine Fire    905
    Enhancement    906
    The Beat Goes On    906
    Coffee    907
    The History of the Future    907
    Poetry Wants To Know    908
    Droegs    908
    Farewell to the Prairie    908
    Therapy Bombardiers    909
    Linear Acceleration    909
    The Invasion of the 2nd Lumbar Region    911
    The Garden of the White Rose    912

    APPENDICES, AFTERWORDS, PUBLICATION HISTORIES,
    BIBLIOGRAPHY AND INDEXES
    Bean News (1972)    915
    Prefaces, Jacket Notes and Introductions
    Preface to Idaho Out     923
    Jacket note to Geography     924
    Jacket note to The North Atlantic Turbine     924
    Preface to Bean News     926
    Preface to The Collected Poems, 1956–1974     926
    Preface to Recollections of Gran Apachería    927
    Introductions to Yellow Lola    928
    Preface to Captain Jack’s Chaps or Houston/MLA    928
    Introduction to High West Rendezvous: An Edward Dorn Sampler     929
    Introduction to Chemo Sábe    931
    Aferword by Amiri Baraka    933
    Afterword by J.H. Prynne    938
    Publication Histories    942
    Bibliography and Further Reading    958
    Index of Titles    963
    Index of First Lines    980 
    Edward Dorn
    Edward Dorn was born in Eastern Illinois in 1929 and grew up in rural poverty during the Great Depression. After two years at the University of Illinois, ‘a set of circumstances and warps of destiny’ took him to Black Mountain College, where he studied with Charles Olson. For several years he ... read more
    Jennifer Dunbar Dorn
    Jennifer Dunbar Dorn was born in Moscow and grew up in London. Married to Edward Dorn for thirty years, her collaborations with him include a book of poems, Manchester Square (1975) and the magazine Rolling Stock (1980s). She edited Dorn’s posthumous collections of poetry Chemo Sábe (2001) and (with Michael Rothenberg) ... read more
    'This monumental and superbly produced Collected Poems from Manchester's Carcanet Press should go some way to rectifying things, for it reveals the body of Dorn's lifelong work in poetry as an achievement of tremendous intelligence, scope and energy'.
    Matthew Sperling, The London Magazine
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