Research Catalog

Title

Abilene! Abilene! : variorum edition with appendices & commentary / Edward Dorn ; Kyle Waugh, editor.

Author

Dorn, Edward

Publication

• New York : Center for the Humanities, the Graduate Center, The City University of New York, 2013.
• Berkeley, California : Small Press Distribution.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

• Waugh, Kyle
• Waugh, Kyle.
• Alcalay, Ammiel
• Mangum, Megan
• City University of New York. Center for the Humanities, publisher.
• Woodberry Poetry Room (Harvard College Library). Collections, repository. poe

Description

2 volumes (54, 58 pages) : illustrations, portraits, facsimiles (some color); 23 cm. +

Summary

"A cross between The Seventh Seal and Blazing Saddles, Abilene! Abilene! is the unfinished screenplay poet Ed Dorn drafted for a collaboration with filmmaker Stan Brakhage in the late 1960s. Though Brakhage once claimed their film “was to be America’s answer to The Blood of a Poet,” the project was twice abandoned for lack of funding—first in 1969, leaving the script half-finished, then again in 1976, when San Francisco-based Zephyrus Image Press canceled plans to publish its first (and only) section. Four decades later, Abilene! Abilene!’s incompleteness and colorful bibliographic history make it a remarkably reflective text: altogether its many versions afford a privileged glimpse into Dorn’s editorial process, and its multistage, prismatic failure offers a narrative index of the waning autonomy of countercultural production and experimentation over the course of the latter half of the 1970s. A peculiar result of cross-media affinities among the post-war American “avant-garde,” Abilene! Abilene! is an idiosyncratic artifact of “Sicksties” (Dorn’s spelling) zeitgeist, and makes an instructive and entertaining component to Dorn’s mock-epic Gunslinger."--Publisher's website.

Series Statement

Lost and Found, The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative ; series 4, number 2, Fall 2013

Uniform Title

• Lost and Found, The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative ; ser. 4, no. 2.
• Woodberry Poetry Room Blue Star collection of books and manuscripts.

Subject

• Dorn, Edward > Criticism and interpretation
• Poets, American > 20th century
• Motion picture plays, American > 20th century

Genre/Form

• Chapbooks, American – 21st century.
• Chapbooks – New York (State) – New York – 2013.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Part 1, [screenplay] : The opening of the strip: an introduction to Abilene! Abilene! -- Abilene! Abilene!, part 1 -- Abilene! Abilene!, extension, part 1 ; Part 2, Appendices : Materials related to Abilene! Abilene! ; Materials related to The twenty dollar sun (Fall 1968) -- Variorum notes for Abilene! Abilene!, part 1 -- Biographies ; Supplementary booklet: "Someday that'll all be beef": the lives & time of Abilene! Abilene! / Kyle Waugh.

OCLC

• 874661870
• SCSB-12858473

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library