Edward Dorn's Collected Poems (Carcanet, 2012), second selection (The Newly Fallen, 1961)

Some favourite passages from this book:


...oh mother
I remember your year-long stare
across plowed flat prairielands.

last lines of "3 Farm Poems"

...what a grey morning I am.

from "The Open Road"

March us home through the spring rain

the belief, the relief

of sunday occasion.

 * 

...the triumph of a march

in which no one

is injured.

from "Sousa"

...may their failure be kindly, and come

in small unnoticeable pieces.

last lies of "Like a Message on Sunday"

The slight stories of explanation

were never meant to be remembered, they are

as change, counted, and then pocketed:

                                       O was one

of their determining inventions

zero, for an empty class, a symbol for nothing,

endowed the void.

from "Our Camp"

Now the yellow strings

Of dusk hang in the air....

from "A Country Song"