Document Type
Book
Publication Date
1988
Abstract
Edward Dorn is a political poet committed to the ideals of democratic culture. A fierce partisan of the free play of critical thought, he is acutely sensitive to the socio-economic forces aligned against an open society. “Democracy,” he insists, “literally has to be cracked on the head all the time to keep it in good condition” (Contemporary Authors 129), and he understands its most serious enemy to be capitalism’s enormous power, which in the post-World Wai- II era has reached beyond the marketplace to infiltrate and control every aspect of American life. Though he despises the bourgeois ethos that sustains these commercial interests, Dorn remains hostile to all parties and ideologies, rejecting liberal pieties as well as conservative platitudes. He advocates neither party nor platform but offers instead a tensely alert mind that challenges every form of political and cultural authority. The result is a series of imaginative, intellectually provocative, and steadily more disturbing images of the American nation.
Recommended Citation
McPheron, William. Edward Dorn. Boise, ID: Boise State University, 1988. Digital. Western Writers Series, 85.