Way More West

Book excerpt: An essential anthology of an innovative American poet Edward Dorn was not only one of America’s finest poets but a rare critical intelligence and commentator. He was a student of Charles Olson, who helped him to see the American West as a site for his quest for self-knowledge; at the core of his work is a deep sense of place and the people who occupy it, underpinned by a wry ironic dissent. It was Dorn’s comic-epic masterpiece, Gunslinger, which began appearing in 1968 and had already become an underground classic by the time it was published in its entirety in 1974, that established his reputation in the wider world. This new volume brings together poems from Dorn’s entire career, including previously uncollected work.