Minding the Darkness

Book excerpt: Minding the Darkness is the final volume of Peter Dale Scott's landmark trilogy Seculum. Following Coming to Jakarta and Listening to the Candle, it brings stunning, triumphant conclusion to a remarkable and sui generis poem. "There is nothing quite like these books," as the American Book Review remarked: "Scott's trilogy, only two-thirds completed as yet, is certain to be one of the most remarkable and challenging works of our rime." Scott's hypnotic epic poem concerns the political and the personal, and their darkly powerful relationships. With its riveting images, Poundian collage, tight three-line stanzas, and eerie, accumulated juxtapositions, Minding the Darkness fully hears out James Laughlin's opinion that "Not since Robert Duncan's Groundwork and before that William Carlos Williams Paterson, has New Directions published a long poem as important as Peter Dale Scott's."