Two Interviews

by Ed Dorn, Gavin Selerie (Editor), Justin Katko (Editor)

Literary Nonfiction. Poetry History & Criticism. Edited by Gavin Selerie and Justin Katko. Edward Dorn's TWO INTERVIEWS brings together two largely unseen interviews from 1971 and 1981, conducted in Vancouver and London, with Tom McGauley, Brian Fawcett, John Scoggan, Stan Persky, J. H. Prynne, Ralph Maud, and Gavin Selerie. Published alongside the interviews are uncollected extracts from Dorn's Day & Night Report (1971), extracts from his unpublished prose work Juneau in June (1981), and three uncollected poems from 1981. Along with Justin Katko's preface to the book, which focuses on Dorn and Prynne's 1971 trip to Vancouver, and an extended introduction to the 1981 interview by Gavin Selerie, which deals with Dorn's geographical and linguistic alignments, particularly those relating to his first period in England, this book includes unpublished photographs, and a bibliography of Dorn interviews.

102 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 2012

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

[Nico · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent set of two interviews that had been new archival stuff found in 2012. The Peak Interview is rather rambling and directionless. Cool to have Dorn alongside Prynne, but it feels like a pointless dialogue that doesn’t really illuminate much of Dorn or Prynne’s poetics and thought. The Riverside Interview by Gavin Selerie makes up for what the Peak one lacks, the preface really creates the context for the interview and draws the connection between Dorn, England, Black Mountain’s reception in England (Donald Davie, Tom Raworth, JH Prynne, etc), and Dorn’s then study of eighteenth century writing. Selerie is a fantastic interviewer and allows his questions to respond to what Dorn says and reads closer to a conversation than an interview. Lots of great insights from Dorn concerning his historical-geographical oriented poetics and how England, and Europe as a whole, changed and narrowed his conception of poetry as his style shifted from his young Olsonian verse to a more mature, oft times aphoristic, Prynnian verse. Of course, Dorn’s style was always entirely his own, but he does draw a lot of connections to how Olson and then Prynne were the teachers that led him to his own style of poetry and thinking. Particularly, I really like the ways in which Selerie points out how English culture’s relation to knowledge differs a lot from the American relation. Also of interest is a brief discussion of Dorn’s pedagogy and how much Olson’s now famous Bibliography really began his life long study of the American West.

Plus, some extra goodies that include two excerpted unpublished Dorn work, The Day and Night Report, a journal that Dorn, his wife Jennifer Dunbar Dorn did her own too, kept during his travels with his wife, children, and Prynne; an unpublished prose account of his time in Alaska, Juneau in June; and a draft of a poem plus three others that had been previously published.

Dorn truly is such an under appreciated poet within America — for such an American poet through and through its astounding that he’s had slightly better reception in England! Two Interviews isn’t a very essential text, you’re better off just reading the poetry and getting Ed Dorn Live, but still, The Riverside Interview and the unpublished texts are worth the price of admission.

Of one thing I am interested in, just a stray thought as I read these, something Dorn takes from Olson and then later Prynne, is the relation between knowledge and verse — that is, how Olson would place philosophy and other fields of knowledge, geography, history, archaeology, and so on, into verse form that wouldn’t sacrifice the musicality and poetic-ness of the poem. I think Dorn understood something of this in his own way. His poetry is, like Olson, like Prynne, highly theoretical, yet, he never sacrifices the musicality and poetic quality of the work. I find that an interesting tension, if it is one, between the expression of ideas and the way to encase them into the poem so they don’t detract from the quality of the verse. Dorn does this wonderfully, and is just another reason I think he is due for a recovery in our contemporary poetic landscape.