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A square-jawed shootout at sunrise, that's the
way I picture it. Did thorny Dorn set at dawn? Probably. Ed was always a lucky
man, I thought. He was lucky to be at Black Mountain College with Olson and,
Fuller and Franz Kline and Creeley. Lucky to secure soft-edged teaching jobs
in windy picturesque places like the mountain valley of Pocatello, Idaho;
Colchester, in England near the North Sea Essex coast; and, in Boulder, Colorado
where he could act out being a high plains cowboy and serve as a keener opposing
magnetic pole to proud Naropaistas matzo ball Buddhists. An English friend
of mine once described Ed as the leading figure in the how-to carve-a-coke-spoon-from-a-giant-redwood-tree
school of poetry. Moreover, in conversation with me, Ed totally dismissed
Ezra Pound as merely "a night school teacher." Yet my Albion amigo and I each
felt he was one of the good guys. Ed was lucky that way too: people liked
him. Ed was a lucky man. He was lucky to marry Jenny Dunbar arguably one of
her generation's most beautiful women in a highly competitive field during
the sixties in London. (Two others being an identical twin sister, and Marianne
Faithfull, her sister-in-law.) Ed was lucky to find a fine printer in the
maverick Brit Barry Hall of Goliard Press, a fine editor in erudite and diligent
Donald Allen, a fine partisan in poet Tom Clark who can play shortstop on
any team. Ed was lucky to be naturally outspoken, he wrote from the hip believing
excess an index of aesthetic success. Perusing a correspondence we had in
1981-83, I rediscovered he was generous in praise, willing to take personal
responsibility for errors, and as a gift found this passage: "The Dutch were
here! It was a good time. Everybody got to meet 'the Rimp.' Julian Deelder
is a great flashback. I liked Bert a lot. I liked the poetry of Bernlef the
most. Can't stand Simon Asshole who complains all the time and is an AG Clone.
Someone should tie a brick to his neck and throw him in the Amstel. OK forget
that." OK; I've already forgotten it. But I'll never forget that Ed and I
both shared an admiration for his fellow Chicago writer Robert Beck, the original
cool daddy better known as Iceberg Slim. Ed was even lucky in his public detractors.
The witty piece about his behavior at a party that appeared in Exquisite
Corpse--from my reading--was rather sweet and affectionate, even if somewhat
perfidious. It reproached Ed for nothing more crucial than preferring to pursue
a healthy taste for sauce and skirts to prolix conversations with sentimental
young men. Luckier still, Ed was to find so many supporters in all the folks
that came to his defense. Ed was lucky in rolling rolling rolling rolling
Rolling Stock a magazine he assured me that didn't "want to get too
much crossfire going between the Jews. After all, it's a goyim readership,
by and large. If that's still possible." Lanky Ed Dorn, the Lucky Luke
of American Poetics. Adios.
20 January 2000 Amsterdam
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