Dorn writes in his Preface (1974) to the Collected Poems that for him the work is ratiocinative, not bardic: "From near the beginning I have known my work to be theoretical in nature and poetic by virtue of its inherent tone."… [This] affiliates Dorn, in this regard only, with more recent figures such as Stevens and Ammons, with Olson of course, and with the open-field poetry which represents in its sequences of syllables and perceptions the act of the mind. Both in theory and in tone, particularly in the managing of transitions, the drive of thought in an extended meditation like "The Land Below," the declarative qualities are Wordsworthian…. [As] a writer whose work is theoretical in nature he wants us to respond to the cogency, precision of detail, and political credibility of his account of American reality. (pp. 142-43)

The end-and-cover maps on some of Dorns's books are...