Amiri Baraka and Edward Dorn: The Collected Letters [Paperback]

The letters of Amiri Baraka and Edward Dorn offer a vivid picture of American lives connecting around poetry during a tumultuous time of change and immense creativity.Claudia Moreno Pisano(now Moreno Parsons) is an associate professor of English at LaGuardia Community College, City University of New York."Baraka and Dorn were at the very heart of two of the most significant developments in American literature in the decades after World War II, the so-called New American Poetry and the Black Arts Movement. That fact alone makes this book one that will interest scholars and poets in many otherwise divergent communities. The letters commence near the beginnings of these two artists' careers. We not only witness the poetic development of these two crucial figures, but we witness it against the background of the evolution of the Civil Rights Movement into the Black Power era. And both writers have much to say about the unfolding revolution in jazz that was taking place alongside the explosive social transformations of American society. The book is filled with significant surprises."—Aldon Lynn Nielsen, author ofReading Race“The two writers (Amiri Baraka and Edward Dorn) could not have hoped for a better editor than Claudia Moreno Pisano, whose notes clarify every obscurity and shed light on shadowy in-jokes.”—Times Literary Supplement“The two writers (Amiri Baraka and Edward Dorn) could not have hoped for a better editor than Claudia Moreno Pisano, whose notes clarify every obscurity and shed light on shadowy in-jokes.”—Times Literary Supplement“The collection provides a fascinating look not only into the lives of these two poets but also into a turbulent time in American culture that is both very different from and sadly very similar to our own.”—Christianity Today“Studiously compiled. . . . [The] fundamental conjunction of alternative cultures and social movemenl.