The Shoshoneans: The People of the Basin-Plateau, Expanded Edition

Recencies Series

by Ed Dorn, Leroy Lucas, Matthew Hofer (Editor)

This is not a Print-on-Demand or facsimile book. It is a hardcover book published with a dust jacket in 1966 by William Morrow & Company, Inc. LOCCN (Library of Congress Call Number) 67-11636. It contains numerous black and white photographs. The Shoshoneans is a classic American travelogue about the Great Basin and Plateau region and the people who inhabit it, never before―or since―documented in such striking and memorable fashion. Neither a book of journalism nor a work of poetry, this powerful collaboration represents the wild wandering of a white poet and black photographer in Civil Rights era (also Vietnam War era) America through a part of the indigenous West that had resisted prior incursions. There are Footnotes and a chapter by Clyde Warrior. A revised edition was published in 2013. The expanded edition offers a wealth of supplemental material, much of it archival, which includes poetry, correspondence, the lecture “The Poet, the People, the Spirit,” and the essay “Ed Dorn in Santa Fe.”

Genres: History, Nonfiction

240 pages, Paperback

Published December 1, 2013

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

[Paul Varner · Rating 5 out of 5]

This edition also contains several of Ed Dorn's major critical essays.

[Kelley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this, even if only for the chapter where Dorn meets the Dorseys - a gripping, emotional portrayal of the outsider recognizing himself as the intruder into a marginalized culture, questioning his assumptions, and contemplating his motives.

[Eric Neyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

An illuminating reflection on human dignity and cruelty, the spiritual devastation wrought by colonialism, and the enduring spark of America's true citizens. Ed Dorn is a one-of-a-kind thinker whose insight might change your outlook forever.