Way West: Stories, Essays and Verse Accounts, 1963-1993

by Ed Dorn

This collection of thirty years’ worth of occasional poems and prose features Edward Dorn’s short fiction, stories populated with the working poor and the drifters, searchers, fugitives, Native Americans, and itinerant trailer-park families. It also includes the book-length poem, Recollections of Gran Apachería , a polemical, spiritual meditation on Geronimo, the Apaches, and their annihilation at the hands of European descendants. A third of the book consists of inflammatory essays, Gonzo travelogues, and idiosyncratic cultural analyses, and these, especially, find Dorn in fine witty, perverse, cantankerous, shocking.

Genres: Poetry, Fiction

281 pages, Paperback

First published December 12, 1993

About the author

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.[citation needed]

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.

Reviews

[Brandon]

a tough read. most of the time. some greatness moments as well.