Edward Dorn, one of the poets that emerged from legendary Black Mountain College in the 1950s, was born in Villa Grove, Illinois. He attended the University of Illinois and Eastern Illinois University before going to Black Mountain in 1951, where he studied with Charles Olson. He has taught at several universities, including Idaho State University at Pocatello, the University of Essex, the University of California at Riverside and at La Jolla, and the University of Colorado. In the meantime, over the course of numerous volumes, he has written with the uncompromising commitment and persistent originality of a truly distinguished poet. With the publication of The Collected Poems: 1956-1974 (1975) and the complete long poem Gunslinger (published as Slinger in 1975), each of which makes more widely available works previously in limited circulation, it is unlikely Edward Dorn will remain primarily the concern of an intimate audience, as he was during the...