DORN'S VIEWS, INTERVIEWS, and OTHER PROSE

The Poet, The People, The Spirit is a transcript of the lecture Edward Dorn gave on July 21, 1965 at the Berkeley Poetry Conference in anticipation of the publication of The Shoshoneans: The People of the Basin-Plateau (1966), a collaboration with Leroy Lucas. Edited by Bob Rose from an initial transcript by Derryll White. Designed by Dwight Gardiner and Bob Rose for Talon Books (Vancouver, BC, 1976).

Edward Dorn's Interviews (1980) was edited by Donald Allen and published by his Four Seasons Foundation in Bolinas, California, in as Writing 38. Contains The Sullen Art Interview; An Interview with Barry Alpert; An Interview with Roy K. Okada; The Poetic Line; Road-Testing the Language; and The Flint Interview. Cover drawing is by Fielding Dawson.

Views was also edited and published by Allen in 1980, and it includes: Ed Dorn's Views, with Tom Clark; Statement for the Paterson Society; What I See in  The Maximus Poems; New York, New York; Nose from Newswhere; The New Frontier; A Cup of Coffee; Two Non-Reviews; The Outcasts of Foker Plat; The Poet, the People, the Spirit; Robert Creeley's Pieces; Of Robert Creeley; Night 65, 300 Nights to Come; Semi Gross: Thoughts on the U.S. Open, 1978; Fear and Clothing at the Blue Note; Dog Eat Dog; The Tower; H20: A Review of Many Waters. The piece on Jimmy Conners vs Bjorn Borg on the first US Open hardcourt tournament is worth the price of admission alone. 

One of the most eclectic collections I've encountered--this volume shows the jaggedness of Dorn through the years in a form that lends continuity to three decades of writing in multiple genres. My introduction to Dorn's poetry was The New American Anthology, followed by Slinger, then the novel, interviews, etc. I wonder what kind of impression Way West would make on a reader unfamiliar with Dorn? It includes Early Stories (1963); excerpts from Some Business Recently Transacted in the White World (1971); Recollections of Gran Apacheria (1974);  Captain Jack's Chaps/Houston MLA (1981); Rolling Stock Editorials (1983-1991); and concludes with Recent Essays (1985-1993).

Ed Dorn Live: Lectures, Interviews, and Outtakes was edited by Joseph Richey for the Univeristy of Michigan Press (2007). It includes On the Authority of Root Meanings, the External and the Making of Gunslinger, circa 1967; On the Making of Gunslinger, circa Chicago 1971; Abhorrences concerning the State of American Poetry; Interview at Madison; From Imperial Chicago; A Correction of the Public Mind; Sentences on Olson, Bunting, and Duncan; Waying the West: The Cooperman Interviews; Poetry is a Difficult Labor: Last Lectures; The Protestant Ethic Revisited; Through the Rearview Mirror; The Last Interviews.