{"id":10221,"date":"2013-04-14T20:27:07","date_gmt":"2013-04-15T00:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=10221"},"modified":"2013-04-14T20:27:07","modified_gmt":"2013-04-15T00:27:07","slug":"bill-sherman-on-ed-dorns-collected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/bill-sherman-on-ed-dorns-collected\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill Sherman On Ed Dorn’s Collected"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"My<\/a>

Cover of my well-traveled copy of Dorn’s “Recollections”<\/p><\/div>\n

Been on the road for readings for nearly a week, thus no posts. Old friend Bill Sherman had sent me a review of the two Dorn reviews plus his own takes on the Dorn, which he graciously gave me permission to repost here on Nomadics \u2014 which I’ll do, as I catch my breath & sort out next week (which will culminate in an Occitan poetry & music performance on Sunday 21st at 3 p.m. at the Bowery poetry Club.\u00a0More on that later in the week.) Here’s Bill’s take from his Marama:OmooPart5<\/strong>\u00a0blog<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Wikipedia notes that Aklavik wasn’t incorporated into a hamlet until 1974.\u00a0 Dorn’s lead-off poem in “The North Atlantic Turbine” – quite rightly called a “great poem” by Iain Sinclair in his\u00a0review of the new Collected\u00a0(LRB, 11 April, “Collected Poems<\/em>” by Edward Dorn) was\u00a0written prophetically\u00a0prior to that, since Turbine was published in 1967 by Fulcrum Press.<\/div>\n
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Sinclair also writes of a time and place, when Compendium Books was still there in the now swarmed over Camden Town.\u00a0 Mike Hart, a mutual friend, is mentioned, and the shadow of Nick Kimberly.\u00a0 And the world of poets publishing poets in Limited Editions.<\/div>\n
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Peter Riley’s two-part article in his “Fortnightly Review” overview of Dorn’s work, correctly, in my opinion, notes that “Recollections of Gran Apacheria” is the apex of Dorn’s achievement, another truly great poem,\u00a0although personally I also\u00a0love some of the early lyrics like “The Air of June Sings” and “The Rick of Green Wood” and “Like A Message On Sunday” and “Vaquero”…. However, Riley goes on to denigrate Turbine (the title poem in particular)\u00a0as if Dorn had no right to criticize things English, and he finds Dorn’s forays into world politics to be a wrong turning foreshadowing misanthropy.\u00a0 But then Riley has never lived in “the belly of the beast”.<\/div>\n
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In both articles, Iain’s\u00a0much stronger in his praise of Dorn,\u00a0it is argued that “Gunslinger” set out be be comedic.\u00a0 I believe this is\u00a0not so.\u00a0 That tone became prevalent more in “The Winterbook”, and then after, when cocaine sets in.\u00a0 True, the talking horse (no doubt inspired by the smoke and\u00a0the old\u00a0American TV series “Ed, The Talking Horse”), and the Canterbury-like group\u00a0assembling prepare one for mock-epic,\u00a0but the tone is post-Zizekian if you will; back then when first published, I found it totally de-familiarizing.\u00a0It\u00a0is not\u00a0only\u00a0serious, despite its mixed tone, it is the first poem I know to have made\u00a0discourse shifts, an insistent epistomological and\u00a0cosmological\u00a0changing of gears, sometimes within the line itself and the contiguous words, an integral part of a “spiritual address”, which\u00a0Dorn\u00a0said\u00a0“The North Atlantic Turbine” (a crucial book) had freed him up\u00a0for.\u00a0 It is in Turbine that his Gunslinger makes his first appearance:<\/div>\n
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“This is for your sadly missing heart….<\/div>\n
it is the girl you left<\/div>\n
in Juarez,\u00a0 the blank<\/div>\n
political days press her now<\/div>\n
in the narrow alleys<\/div>\n
or in the confines of the river town<\/div>\n
her dress is torn<\/div>\n
by the misadventure of<\/div>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 her gothic search<\/div>\n
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———-<\/div>\n
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my mare lathers with tedium<\/div>\n
her hooves are dry<\/div>\n
Look they are covered with the alkali<\/div>\n
of the enormous space<\/div>\n
between here and formerly.<\/div>\n
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———-<\/div>\n
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And why do you have a female horse<\/div>\n
Gunslinger?\u00a0 I asked.\u00a0 Don’t move<\/div>\n
he replied<\/div>\n
the sun sits deliberately<\/div>\n
on the rim of the sierra”<\/div>\n
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It reminds one of early Godard (Band of Outsiders), and it was, to use Ralph Maud’s term “archaic postmodern” referring to Olson.\u00a0 It was a new mode of poetic composition in a way, but “The Winterbook” begins its descent into satire from a loftier plane into the comic mode Riley and Sinclair say was its original intent.\u00a0 I\u00a0think the aim was higher.\u00a0 He wanted to be “a classical poet” he had said, not “neo-classic” – though Byron too loved the eighteenth century poets, and attacked Keats for his dissing of them (“they swayed back and forth upon a rocking horse \/ and called it Pegasus”).\u00a0 As Tom Clark, in his biography of Dorn, “A World Of Difference”\u00a0 perceptively writes of “The Cycle” interrupting what was becoming of the epic turned mock:<\/div>\n
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“Dorn extends the range of his symbolism into an area very close to moral allegory.\u00a0 The extension is consistent with his working principles in the poem, which differs from his previous efforts in the multivalent density of the referential field it activates….” (p. 113).<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

And here is the opening of Book 2:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 “This tapestry moves<\/div>\n
as\u00a0the morning lights up.<\/div>\n
And they who are in it move<\/div>\n
and love its moving<\/div>\n
from sleep to Idea<\/div>\n
born on the breathing<\/div>\n
of a distant harmonium, To See<\/div>\n
is their desire<\/div>\n
as they wander estranged”<\/div>\n
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In the later work: the\u00a0sardonic aphorisms of “Abhorrences” and the under-rated “Languedoc Variorum” and the final poems of “Chemo Sabe” “spectacular rewards” as Sinclair writes, “are offered…as the strategic shifts and heretical inspirations of the poet’s long career are revealed.\u00a0 First, his courage. Then his persistence….Dorn refined his ability to articulate a precise report from wherever he stood.\u00a0 He mastered a ‘terrific actualism’.”<\/div>\n
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Yes, he has moved from some\u00a0beautiful early poems (almost Frostian at times), to original authentic voice,\u00a0innovative and\u00a0enduring, a lasting achievement.<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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(Bill Sherman, April 6th\/7th 2013)<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Been on the road for readings for nearly a week, thus no posts. Old friend Bill Sherman had sent me a review of the two Dorn reviews plus his own takes on the Dorn,...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,90,91],"tags":[194,1350],"class_list":["post-10221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-criticism","category-poetics","category-poetry","tag-bill-sherman","tag-edward-dorn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10221"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10234,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10221\/revisions\/10234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}