Budapest, The Holy Book of Women's Mysteries: Feminist Witchcraft, Goddess Rituals, Spellcasting & Other Womanly Arts, (Oakland, CA:
Wingbow Press, 1999 [1980]).
Gunslinger's transition from outlaw to classic--from its serial release starting in 1968 to Wingbow's 1975 complete edition (printed by the fugitive Zephyrus Imagists investigated by Alastair Johnston in this issue) to Duke University Press's reprint in 1989, replete with enthusiastic introduction by Marjorie Perloff, president-elect of the Modern Language Association (4)--has done little to mitigate the delight this "post-ephemeral" "spasm / of presyntactic metalinguistic urgency" supplies as it traverses the "terrific actualism" of "the inside real / and the outsidereal." (5) This book might still feel relevant in the early 21st century because once again we've acquired a paranoid and kleptocratic administration keen on imperialist adventures.
His next three books--Hello, La Jolla (Wingbow, 1978), Yellow Lola (Cadmus, 1981), Abhorrences (Black Sparrow, 1990)--function simultaneously as catalogs of and antidotes to the pseudodoxies transmitted in "our still encircled world." Those who expect comfort and affirmation in their verse will be sorely perturbed by the mordant wit and intense didacticism of these discourteous topical poems that take an aggressive stance against the state and the species in the blighted '70s and the Reaganized '80s.
(1992) The Art of Daily Activism,
Wingbow Press, California
The definite guide is still Sally Socolich's newly updated Bargain Hunting in the Bay Area (
Wingbow Press, Berkeley, 1990> $8.95), available at bookstores.
Dorn's major book, Slinger, was produced by Teter and Myers for
Wingbow Press; they were also the co-conspirators on Recollections of Gran Apacheria and a number of other Dorn publications.