Edward Dorn's Collected Poems (2012), fifth selection (from Twenty-Four Love Songs, 1969))

Some favourite passages from Twenty-Four Love Songs (1969):


My speech is tinged
my tongue has taken
a foreigner into it
Can you understand
my uncertainties grow
and underbrush and thicket 
of furious sensibility 
between us....

the first half of '3'

...pleasure

unrung by the secretly expected

fingers of last sunday

from '6'

now everywhere I turn

and everytime there is

that full thing with us

I am cottered

from '10'

We made the journey by train

it was cold now and then

a day scored by a cloud

the heat we had we had in our pockets

and occasionally we took some

what more can be said

more than the existence we have

second and final stanza of '14'

There is no final word

for how you are.

An emotional response

can be the reputation to

which all inquiry is referred

and let go at that.

opening stanza of '24'

Buy Edward Dorn's Collected Poems directly from the publisher.