Editing Ed Dorn

{{short description|American poet}}
{{redirect|Edward Dorn|the United States Navy officer|Edward John Dorn}}
{{More footnotes|date=June 2015}}
{{infobox writer
|name=Ed Dorn
|birth_name=Edward Merton Dorn
|image=Ed Dorn.jpg
|birth_date={{birth date|1929|4|2}}
|birth_place=[[Villa Grove, Illinois]], U.S.
|death_date={{death date and age|1999|12|10|1929|4|2}}
|death_place=[[Denver]], [[Colorado]], U.S.
|occupation={{flatlist|
*Poet
*educator
}}
|alma_mater=[[University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign]]
|notable_works=''[[Gunslinger (poem)|Gunslinger]]''
|spouse=Helene<br>Jennifer Dunbar
}}
'''Edward Merton Dorn''' (April 2, 1929 – December 10, 1999) was an [[American poet]] and teacher often associated with the [[Black Mountain poets]]. His most famous work is ''[[Gunslinger (poem)|Gunslinger]]''.

==Overview==
{{more citations needed section|date=July 2015}}
Dorn was born in [[Villa Grove, Illinois]]. He grew up in rural poverty during the Great Depression. He attended a one-room schoolhouse for his first eight grades. He later studied at the [[University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign|University of Illinois]] and at [[Black Mountain College]] (1950–55). At Black Mountain he came into contact with [[Charles Olson]], who greatly influenced his literary worldview and his sense of himself as poet.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/edward-dorn/company/02304585| title=Edward Dorn |publisher= Poetry Foundation|accessdate=4 March 2025}}</ref>

Dorn's final examiner at Black Mountain was [[Robert Creeley]], with whom, along with the poet [[Robert Duncan (poet)|Robert Duncan]], Dorn became included as one of a trio of younger poets later associated with Black Mountain and with Charles Olson.<ref>''The Lost America of Love'', by Sherman Paul, celebrates this relationship, as did the Charles Olson conference held under Paul's direction at the University of Iowa in 1978, in which Dorn, Duncan, and Creeley were the only poets participating among a flurry of academic literary scholars. Dorn is now considered by some commentators to be the inheritor of Olson's bardic mantle, the transmittee of the lamp.</ref>

In 1951, Dorn left Black Mountain and traveled to the [[Pacific Northwest]], where he did manual labor and met his first wife, Helene; they returned to the school in late 1954. After graduation and two years of travel, Dorn's family settled in Washington state, the setting for his autobiographical novel ''By the Sound'' (originally published as ''Rites of Passage''), which describes the grinding poverty of life in "the basement stratum of society."  In 1961 he accepted his first teaching job at [[Idaho State University]], where he published the magazine ''Wild Dog''. His first book of poetry, ''The Newly Fallen'', was published by [[LeRoi Jones]]'s Totem Press in 1961.

In 1965, with the photographer Leroy Lucas, Dorn spent the summer visiting Indian reservations for a book commissioned by William Morrow & Co. Press, ''The Shoshoneans''.  That fall, British poet and scholar [[Donald Davie]] invited him to join the faculty at the Literature Department he was creating at the new [[University of Essex]].<ref name="jacketmagazine.com">{{Cite web |url=http://jacketmagazine.com/38/waugh-dorn.shtml |title= "You Are Sometimes in the Trance of What Is Beyond You": Upheaval, Incantation and Ed Dorn in the Summer of 1968 |last=Waugh  |first=Kyle |year=2009 |website=Jacket Magazine}}</ref> He spent most of the next five years in England, where he published several collections of poems and wrote Book 1 of ''Gunslinger''.  He also started working with Gordon Brotherston on translations from Latin American texts, solidified his close friendship with British poet [[J.H. Prynne]], and met his second wife, Jennifer Dunbar.<ref name="jacketmagazine.com"/>

On returning to the United States, Dorn spent the 1970s as an academic migrant, teaching at over half a dozen universities across the country. In San Francisco, he collaborated with the printer and artist team of (Holbrook) Teter and (Michael) Myers on a number of projects, including the ''Bean News'', the comic book format of ''Recollections of Gran Apachería''', and the typesetting of the complete ''Gunslinger'' in 1974.  In 1977 Dorn accepted a professorship at the [[University of Colorado at Boulder]], where he taught for the rest of his life, directing the Creative Writing Program and editing the literary newspaper ''[[Rolling Stock (newspaper)|Rolling Stock]]'' (motto: “If It Moves Print It”) with his wife Jennifer.

Dorn was openly homophobic. His 1984 poem "Aid(e) Memoire" warned that those who "screw and are screwed...drink directly from the sewer." He inaugurated the "Aids Award for Poetry" in the same year, giving it to several leading gay poets.<ref>''Fairyland'', by Alysia Abbot, p. 189</ref>

During the 1990s, after a teaching exchange visit to [[Paul Valery University, Montpellier III|Paul Valery University]] in [[Montpellier]] inspired an interest in the [[Cathars]] of Southern France, he started working on ''Languedoc Variorum: A Defense of Heresy and Heretics''. He was also writing another long narrative poem ''Westward Haut''. During the last two and a half years of his life, he wrote the poems for the posthumously published ''Chemo Sabe'', reporting on his cancer treatments.

Dorn's main work, his [[Masterpiece|magnum opus]], is ''[[Gunslinger (Ed Dorn poem)|''Gunslinger'']]''. ''Gunslinger'' is a long poem in five sections. Part 1 was first published in 1968, and the final complete text appeared in 1974. Other important publications include ''The Collected Poems: 1956-1974'' (1975), ''Recollections of Gran Apacheria'' (1975), ''Abhorrences'' (1989), ''High West Rendezvous: A Sampler'' (1997), and ''[Way More West: New and Selected Poems]'' (2008). <ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/feb/01/collected-poems-by-edward-dorn-review| title=Collected Poems by Edward Dorn |publisher= The Guardian|accessdate=4 March 2025}}</ref>

Popular horror novelist [[Stephen King]] admired Dorn, describing his poetry as "talismans of perfect writing" and even naming the first novel of [[The Dark Tower (series)|The Dark Tower series]], "The Gunslinger," in honor of Dorn's poem.<ref>[http://jacketmagazine.com/32/fredman-dorn.shtml The Dark Tower (series)], jacketmagazine.com; accessed July 22, 2015.</ref> King opened both the prologue and epilogue of "The Stand" with Dorn's line, "We need help, the Poet reckoned."<ref>King, Stephen. ''The Stand''. New York; New American Library Publishing, 1990 Unabridged Paperback Edition. pp xix, 1136.</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://jacketmagazine.com/32/fredman-dorn.shtml| title=Introduction to Edward Dorn |publisher= Jacket Magazine|accessdate=4 March 2025}}</ref>

==Death==
Dorn died of [[pancreatic cancer]] on December 10, 1999, in [[Denver, Colorado]]. His papers are collected at the [[University of Connecticut]] as well as at Indiana University at Bloomington.{{citation needed|date=June 2015}}

==Dorn's teaching career==
During his life, Dorn taught at a number of institutions of higher learning, including [[Idaho State University]] at [[Pocatello, Idaho|Pocatello]] (1961–65); the [[University of Essex]] in [[England]] (1965–70) as a Fulbright lecturer; [[Northeastern Illinois University]] at [[Chicago]] (1970–71); [[Kent State University]], [[Ohio]] (1973–74); and the [[University of Colorado at Boulder|University of Colorado]] (1977–99). His second wife, Jennifer Dunbar Dorn, is an English filmmaker and writer Dorn met during his Essex years.{{citation needed|date=June 2015}}

In the early 1970s, as a visiting poet at [[Kent State University]], Dorn, along with British poet and editor [[Eric Mottram]], was a mentor and supporter of the musical group [[Devo]], and its founders [[Gerald Casale]] and [[Bob Lewis (musician)|Bob Lewis]].{{citation needed|date=June 2015}}

==Works==
===Poetry===
* 1961: ''The Newly Fallen'', Totem Press, New York.<ref name=edpf>Web page titled [http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=1837 "Archive / Edward Dorn (1929-1999)"] at the Poetry Foundation website, retrieved May 8, 2008.</ref> 
* 1964: ''Hands Up!'', Totem Press, New York.<ref name=edpf/>
* 1964: ''From Gloucester Out'', Matrix Press, London (U.K.).<ref name=edpf/> 
* 1965: ''Idaho Out'', [[Fulcrum Press]], London.<ref name=edpf/> 
* 1965: ''Geography'', Fulcrum Press, London.<ref name=edpf/> 
* 1967: ''The North Atlantic Turbine'', Fulcrum Press, London.<ref name=edpf/> 
* 1968: ''[[Gunslinger (Ed Dorn poem)|Gunslinger]]'', [[Black Sparrow Press]]<ref name=edpf/> 
* 1969: ''[[Gunslinger (Ed Dorn poem)|Gunslinger]]: Book II'', Black Sparrow Press<ref name=edpf/> 
* 1969: ''The Midwest Is That Space Between the Buffalo Statler and the Lawrence Eldridge'', T. Williams<ref name=edpf/> 
* 1969: ''The Cosmology of Finding Your Spot'', Cottonwood<ref name=edpf/> 
* 1969: ''Twenty-four Love Songs'', Frontier Press<ref name=edpf/> 
* 1970: ''[[Gunslinger (Ed Dorn poem)|Gunslinger]] I & II'', Fulcrum Press, London.<ref name=edpf/> {{ISBN|978-0822309321}}
* 1970: ''Songs Set Two: A Short Count'', Frontier Press, {{ISBN|978-0-686-05052-0}} 
* 1971: ''The Cycle'', Frontier Press
* 1971: ''A Poem Called Alexander Hamilton'', Tansy/Peg Leg Press<ref name=edpf/> 
* 1971: ''Spectrum Breakdown: A Microbook'', Athanor Books<ref name=edpf/> 
* 1972: ''The Hamadryas Baboon at the Lincoln Park Zoo'', Wine Press<ref name=edpf/> 
* 1972: ''[[Gunslinger (Ed Dorn poem)|Gunslinger]], Book III: The Winterbook, Prologue to the Great Book IV Kornerstone'', Frontier Press<ref name=edpf/> 
* 1974: ''Recollections of Gran Apacheria'', Turtle Island<ref name=edpf/> 
* 1974: ''Slinger'' (contains ''[[Gunslinger (Ed Dorn poem)|Gunslinger]]'', Books I-IV and "The Cycle"), [[Wingbow Press]]<ref name=edpf/> 
* 1975: With Jennifer Dunbar, ''Manchester Square'', Permanent Press<ref name=edpf/> 
* 1975: ''Collected Poems: 1956-1974'', Four Seasons Foundation<ref name=edpf/> 
* 1976: "Hello, La Jolla", [[No Mountains Poetry Project]] Broadside Series, Evanston, Il, 1976
* 1978: ''Hello, La Jolla'', Wingbow Press,<ref name=edpf/> {{ISBN|978-0-914728-24-5}}
* 1978: ''Selected Poems'', edited by [[Donald Allen]], Grey Fox Press<ref name=edpf/>
* 1981: ''Yellow Lola'', Cadmus Editions<ref name=edpf/> 
* 1983: ''Captain Jack's Chaps—Houston/MLA'', Black Mesa Press<ref name=edpf/>  
* 1989: ''Abhorrences'', Black Sparrow Press<ref name=edpf/>
* 1993: ''The Denver Landing'', Uprising Press<ref name=edpf/>  
* 1996: ''High West Rendezvous: A Sampler''<ref name=edpf/>
* 2001: ''Chemo Sábe'', Limberlost Press<ref name=edpf/>  
* 2007: ''Way More West: New & Selected Poems'', edited by Michael Rothenberg, Penguin Books. {{ISBN|978-0-14-303869-6}} (posthumous)
* 2012: ''Westward Haut'', Etruscan Books (posthumous)
* 2012: ''Collected Poems'', Carcanet Press (posthumous). {{ISBN|978-1847771261}}
* 2015: ''Derelict Air: From Collected Out'', Enitharmon Editions (posthumous) {{ISBN|978-1-907587-78-8}}

===Translations===
* 1968: With [[Gordon Brotherston]], ''Our Word: Guerilla Poems From Latin America'', Grossman<ref name=edpf/> 
* 1969: With Gordon Brotherston, ''[[Jose Emilio Pacheco]], Tree Between Two Walls'', Black Sparrow Press<ref name=edpf/> 
* 1976: With Gordon Brotherston, ''Selected Poems of [[Cesar Vallejo]], Penguin<ref name=edpf/>
* 1979: With Gordon Brotherston, ''Image of the New World'' Thames & Hudson<ref name=edpf/>
* 1999: With Gordon Brotherston, ''Sun Unwound: Original Texts from Occupied America'', North Atlantic Books,[4] anthology

===Prose, fiction and essay===
* 1960: ''What I See in the Maximus Poems'', Migrant Press (criticism)<ref name=edpf/>
* 1964:   [[Michael Rumaker]] and [[Warren Tallman]], ''Prose 1'', Four Seasons Foundation<ref name=edpf/> 
* 1965: ''The Rites of Passage: A Brief History'', Frontier Press<ref name=edpf/> 
* 1966: ''The Shoshoneans: The People of the Basin-Plateau'', Morrow,<ref name=edpf/> 66 pages
* 1969:  Author of introduction, ''The Book of Daniel Drew'' [written in 1910 by [[Bouck White]]], Frontier Press<ref name=edpf/> 
* 1969: ''By the Sound,'' Frontier Press; republished with a new preface by the author, Black Sparrow Press, 1991<ref name=edpf/>
* 1971: ''Some Business Recently Transacted in the White World'' (short stories), Frontier Press<ref name=edpf/>  
* 1972: ''Bean News'' (newspaper, various authors, the 'secret book' of ''Gunslinger''), Zephyrus Image<ref>{{cite web |url=http://plantarchy.us/dorn/bean-news1.pdf |title= Info |website=plantarchy.us}}</ref>
* 1976: ''The Poet, the People, the Spirit'', Talonbooks<ref name=edpf/> 
* 1978: ''Roadtesting the Language: An Interview with Ed Dorn'', UC, San Diego<ref name=edpf/>
* 1980: ''Interviews'', Four Seasons Press<ref name=edpf/>
* 1980: ''Views'', Four Seasons Press<ref name=edpf/>
* 1993: ''Way West: Stories, Essays and Verse accounts, 1963-1993'', Black Sparrow Press, includes the previously published (1974) ''Recollections of Gran Apacheria''<ref name=edpf/>
* 2007: ''Ed Dorn Live: Lectures, Interviews, and Outtakes'', edited by [[Joseph Richey]], [[University of Michigan Press]]. {{ISBN|978-0-472-06862-3}} (posthumous)
* 2012: ''Two Interviews'', Shearsman Books (posthumous)
* 2013: Amiri Baraka and Edward Dorn: ''The Collected Letters'', University of New Mexico Press. {{ISBN|9780826353917}}

==Further reading==
* Beach, Christopher (1992) ''ABC of Influence: Ezra Pound and the Remaking of American Poetic Tradition'', University of California Press.
* Clark, Tom (2002) ''Edward Dorn: A World of Difference.'' Berkeley: North Atlantic Books. 
* Davie, Donald (1970) "The Black Mountain Poets: Charles Olson and Edward Dorn," in ''The Survival of Poetry'' (Martin Dodsworth, ed). London: Faber & Faber.
* Elmborg, James K (1998) ''A Pageant of Its Time: Edward Dorn's Slinger and the Sixties.'' Studies in Modern Poetry, Vol. 6, Peter Lang Publishing, New York.
* Levy, William (20 January 2000) [https://web.archive.org/web/20070301172713/http://www.corpse.org/issue_4/burning_bush/dorn.htm "Death of a Gunslinger: An Obituary on Ed Dorn for America." ''Exquisite Corpse''], Issue 4.
* McPheron, William (1989) ''Edward Dorn.''  Western Writers Series #85, Boise State University.
* Paul, Sherman (1981) ''The Lost America of Love: Rereading Robert Creeley, Edward Dorn, and Robert Duncan.'' Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
* Spitzer, Mark (1996) "Dinner with Slinger," in ''Thus Spake the Corpse, An Exquisite Corpse Reader 1988-1998, Vol. 2 - Fictions, Travels & Translations'' ([[Andrei Codrescu|Codrescu, A]] and Rosenthal, L, eds.) Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press.
* Spitzer, Mark (1999) "Transcript of an Ed Dorn Rant" ''Jack Magazine,'' [https://web.archive.org/web/20061205050810/http://jackmagazine.com/issue4/marks.html Issue 4].
* Streeter, David ed. (1973) ''A Bibliography of Ed Dorn.'' New York: The Phoenix Bookshop.
* Wesling, Donald, ed. (1985)''Internal Resistances: The Poetry of Ed Dorn.'' University of California Press

==References==
{{reflist}}

==External links==
*[http://www.bigbridge.org/edindex.htm In Remembrance of Ed Dorn] 
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20041209192058/http://www.centomag.org/archive/edward_dorn/edward_dorn.html Edward Dorn], centomag.org
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20041206042456/http://www.poems.com/essastei.htm Preface to "Edward Dorn, American Heretic" (Chicago Review 49:3/4-50:1)] 
*[http://www.sorabji.com/tpogh/stories/rambles/dorn.html From Gloucester Out], sorabji.com
*[http://www.thing.net/~grist/bove/rbdorn.htm Three poems by Dorn], thing.net 
*[http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/dorn/ Ed Dorn profile], epc.buffalo.edu
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20061202134257/http://www.lib.uconn.edu/online/research/speclib/ASC/findaids/Dorn/MSS19900049.html The Edward Dorn Papers], lib.uconn.edu/
*[http://www.vlib.us/beats/dorn.html "The Cosmology of Finding Your Spot" (poem, 1969], vlib.us
*[http://www.limberlostpress.com/authors/dorn.htm ''Chemo Sábe α Edward Dorn''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061015040016/http://www.limberlostpress.com/authors/dorn.htm |date=2006-10-15 }}, limberlostpress.com 
*[http://robmclennan.blogspot.com/2006/04/deep-in-dorn-country-stepping-into.html ''Deep in Dorn Country: stepping into the poetry of Ed Dorn''] 
*[http://earthwithcity.blogspot.com/2007/05/what-is-not-permitted-is-recognition.html "What is not permitted is recognition": Dorn visits "Dog"], earthwithcity.blogspot.com
*[http://www.pnreview.co.uk/cgi-bin/scribe?file=/home/pnreview/public_html/members/pnr178/articles/178ar07.txt Ed Dorn's Theatre of Impatience], pnreview.co.uk
*[http://atom.archives.sfu.ca/index.php/ed-dorn-fonds Records of Ed Dorn are held by Simon Fraser University's Special Collections and Rare Books]

{{Poets in The New American Poetry 1945–1960}}
{{American Book Awards}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dorn, Edward}}
[[Category:1929 births]]
[[Category:1999 deaths]]
[[Category:Deaths from cancer in Colorado]]
[[Category:Deaths from pancreatic cancer in the United States]]
[[Category:People from Douglas County, Illinois]]
[[Category:20th-century American educators]]
[[Category:Beat Generation poets]]
[[Category:Black Mountain poets]]
[[Category:Kent State University faculty]]
[[Category:Idaho State University faculty]]
[[Category:Northeastern Illinois University faculty]]
[[Category:University of Colorado faculty]]
[[Category:Academics of the University of Essex]]
[[Category:Black Mountain College alumni]]
[[Category:University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alumni]]
[[Category:20th-century American poets]]
[[Category:American Book Award winners]]
[[Category:20th-century American male writers]]