Series III

Lost & Found Series III authenticates Edward Dahlberg’s claim that “There is more political energy in friendship than in ideology.” Working in zones of astonishing connectedness, charged by each other’s energy, and changed by encounters with converging sociopolitical and artistic movements, the writers in this series include: Langston Hughes and Nancy Cunard, who cemented their personal relationship by penning notes across the ocean throughout the Spanish Civil War and John Wieners and Charles Olson, who, after meeting at Black Mountain, remain in close correspondence until months before Olson’s death. In “Old Father, Old Artificer,” part lecture and part evocation of Charles Olson, Diane di Prima helps to establish how key figures in “New American Poetry” were processing their own past, while the breathless Olson lecture by Edward Dorn erodes the fictive dualism that pits poetic theory against practical action. In his letters, Michael Rumaker invites you to share his life, its radiant pursuit of love, “dirty realism,” literature, and lasting community, and Joanne Kyger booms “communication is essential” in her Letters To & From. Lastly, in Homemade Poems, a gift-book mailed to a friend in 1964, Lorine Niedecker clearly insists that the handmade chapbook is the material continuation of the poems so carefully nestled in its pages. Breaking up the monolith of the historical lens, Series III continues to track individuals as they tell their stories, cast their lifelines, and position themselves in relation to the times they lived in—and the times we live in—through intimate journals, letters, lectures, and friendships