Ed Dorn (1929-1999), the much-missed, Ed Dorn, the American poet, remembered for his political bite and his uncompromising intelligence was born on this day.
Gunslinger, his epic poem, here and here
More Dorn audio and video (a veritable trove of audio and video) – here
More detailed resources (a plethora of Dorn resources – here
Erik Steinhof’s 2024 Preface to Edward Dorn American Heretic (Chicago Review)
Stephen Friedman’s 2007 Introduction to Ed Dorn
A tip of the hat to Kyle Waugh‘s extraordinary scholarship – see, for just one example, here
Ed Dorn and Amiri Baraka, two American poets who maintained a long-lasting and deep friendship and, who, not unsurprisingly, have been occluded, and need urgently to be revisited and read in these fractious times
Claudia Moreno Pisano edited in 2013 the Collected Letters
As Jennifer Dunbar Dorn, (Ed’s widow), has written – “In a poem remembering Ed, his old friend Amiri Baraka described him: “Thin straight blonde Cowboy / Movie looking white guy with the mind / Of a saw.”…(and) what Amiri said about him in the same poem: “I dug Ed Dorn because he would rather / Make you his enemy / Than Lie,” stayed true until the end”.
Jennifer Dunbar Dorn can be seen and heard here (in London, on the occasion the publication of his Collected Poems).
Here’s Iain Sinclair, Tom Pickard, Tom Raworth, Elaine Feinstein. and John Hall from that 2012 celebration
More observations and recollections (from his 2000 San Francisco memorial gathering) – here
Allen Ginsberg on Ed Dorn: “Dorn has a kind of long, real spare manly, political thing – but his great quality inside also is tenderness.”