Series IV

Framed by the lives of Harlem Renaissance poet Helene Johnson and celebrated contemporary poet Adrienne Rich, Lost & Found Series IV recalibrates our connections to literary and cultural history in fresh and unexpected ways. From a never before seen manuscript of Johnson’s poems to the public and private memos, course syllabi, and passionately devised writing assignments in Rich’s treasure trove of teaching materials at City College, this volume overturns all expectations. In celebration of the 100th birthday of Gloucester poet and former union organizer Vincent Ferrini, Lost & Found editors excavated rare early texts, including the 1936 Onions & Bread, written while working for the WPA, and a facsimile reproduction of Tidal Wave: Poems of the Great Strikes, depicting labor upheavals following the New Deal. While Robert Duncan and Pauline Kael both have dedicatedaudiences, few are aware of their formative and intense friendship, presented here through correspondence from 1945-46 in which they support each other’s work and survey the post-war political scene with clarity and prescience. A perennial Lost & Found subject, poet Edward Dorn is represented here by the long rumored Abilene! Abilene!, a screenplay meant to be filmed by iconic experimentalist Stan Brakhage, and laid out here in a meticulous variorum edition, with notes and storyboards. Building cultural history from the ground up, Series IV provides a completely different vantage point from which to further explore this rich era.