Ed Dorn
Ed 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.
Overview
Edward Merton 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 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.
Dorn's final examiner at Black Mountain was Robert Creeley, with whom, along with the poet Robert Duncan, Dorn became included as one of a trio of younger poets later associated with Black Mountain and with Charles Olson.
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.
Podcasts:
Ed Dorn
ALBUMS
- Totally Corrupt (The Dial-A-Poem Poets) released: 1976
Totally Corrupt (The Dial-A-Poem Poets)
Released 1976- Cloud Nine / I Live in a Neighborhood of Murderers / Two Horse Collars
- Excerpts From "Gunslinger, Book 4"
- When Did I Stop Wanting to Be President
- Daddy
- Excerpts From "Shit, Piss, Blood, Pus & Brains"
- Jaguar Sky / There's Cruelty in Every Jewel
- Jet Set Melodrama
- You Are My Lucky Star
- This Is the Age of Investigation Poetry and Every Citizen Must Investigate
- Christ, You'll Never Know / The Closing of the Topless and Bottomless Bar
- Some Small Fires
- Hard Facts: Rockefeller's Your Vice-President and Your Mama Don't Wear No Draws / A New Reality Is Better Than a New Movie
- For a Woman
- A Brief Discourse
- Excerpt from "Guru, Guru, Gate"
- Mushrooms (for John Cage)
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by Auryn
What I Do
by: AurynSlowly I move across the room. Where are you?
Silently I cry trying to decide. Who are you?
All these things I've shown you more or less,
are all the things I know to be the best.
It's what I do.
Here, closely we lay, mostly to wait for some room.
Then vacantly we speak, empty and weak.
How are you?
All these things you've shown me go against
all the things we know to be the best.
So what'd I do? Tell me. If it's not me...
It's you.
How do you want me to be?
What can I do to make you happy?
What do you want me to say?
When I speak the truth you take it your own way.
All these things I've shown you more or less,
are all the things I've known to be the best.