A Review of Edward Dorn's Derelict Air: From Collected Out Just Made Us Weepy

At The Rumpus, Patrick James Dunagan reviews Edward Dorn's posthumous collection, Derelict Air: From Collected Out, published this summer by the UK's terrific Enitharmon Press. "While the Collected remains nonetheless an essential presentation of Dorn’s published books, Derelict Air: From Collected Out at long last satisfies the nagging desire for previously unpublished work." The press describes this work specifically:

Derelict Air gathers over 400 pages of Edward Dorn’s previously uncollected poetry gleaned from ephemera, correspondence, and notebooks housed at numerous archives in the USA and UK. From Dorn’s first Beat poems in 1952, to visionary juvenalia from his study at Black Mountain, to the long poems that were central to the development of the British Poetry Revival, and to translations of native texts from the Mayans and Aztecs, the transatlantic roots of Dorn’s anti-capitalism are here fully visible. Robert Creeley wrote of Dorn that “No poet has been more painfully, movingly, political”. Whereas Dorn’s Collected Poems exhibits the poet that he became, Derelict Air reflects a career of becoming...

Dunagan reminds us that this endeavor "represents the absolute ransacking of Dorn archives far and wide"; that's undoubtedly due to the hard work of editors Justin Katko and Kyle Waugh. This review sure helps the poetry to resonate; read an excerpt/become a follower below.

...Derelict Air offers versions of Dorn’s poetry he rarely if ever allowed appear. For the first time readers have the opportunity to follow his experimentation as he develops his own path forward. Though often sardonically humorous, these poems also on occasion broach the deeply personal.

In the late sixties Dorn was living and teaching in England when he broke off his first marriage leaving his wife Helene and their children to start life anew with his then student at the time Jennifer Dunbar (later Dorn) with whom he had two more children and remained married until his death in 1999. This upheaval in Dorn’s personal life remains rather underexplored as a major defining event in relation to his poetic development. Dorn was understandably always relatively circumspect publicly in regard to this time. Tom Clark’s biography Edward Dorn: A World of Difference (2002) opens with a brief reminiscence of a night out Dorn spent with Dunbar and friends—Clark was a member of the party that had gone out to the movies to watch The Magnificent Seven (one probable source Dorn drew upon for Gunslinger)—only to then commence on a straightforward biographical account of Dorn’s earlier life up until his arrival in England followed by an epilogue composed of extracts from correspondence Clark received from Dorn decades later during his final years. There’s been little critical engagement with the period in which Dorn left behind not only his earlier work but his first family as well.

Published here for the first time, the poem “Once, Again” (written circa June 1968) from its very opening lines, “My wandering / has cost me everything” reveals a startling instance of Dorn describing his emotional state during this time and the inextricable nature of the relationship between his personal life and his writing/reading life. As he takes assessment of his concerns, he appears alone at home with his books: “I sit in this room looking at some books / looking at my life” the books become interchangeable with the individual writers (“people”) who wrote them: “I’ve carried them around / some people I had to have, some I thought I should / have with me.” Soon he is mixing the people behind his books with his family, the texts of the books with the people of his life, those “who have tried to live with” him. He remarks how emotionally he’s “just cool in some areas”:

Sentimental shit. This choked throat. I didn’t even blink when my son discovered he doesn’t even bear my name. Maybe I’m just cool in some areas. Signed copies which won’t fit in my pocket. Some came off on my brain and if you open the covers of the book you’ll find the print missing. The people who have tried to live with me know where to look for the missing pages. They have been part of my life

Acknowledging that his circumstances are changing, as he finds himself drifting away from those who “have been / part” of his life, he finds himself, as he says, “split”:

I could walk out and not look back into this room leave it every individual page behind. My split self tells me.