The Shoshoneans
The People of the Basin-Plateau, Expanded Edition
First published almost fifty years ago and long out of print, The Shoshoneans is a classic American travelogue about the Great Basin and Plateau region and the people who inhabit it, never before--or since--documented in such striking and memorable fashion. Neither a book of journalism nor a work of poetry, this powerful collaboration represents the wild wandering of a white poet and black photographer in Civil Rights era (also Vietnam War era) America through a part of the indigenous West that had resisted prior incursions. The expanded edition offers a wealth of supplemental material, much of it archival, which includes poetry, correspondence, the lecture "The Poet, the People, the Spirit," and the essay "Ed Dorn in Santa Fe."
Edward Dorn (1929-99) was professor of creative writing at the University of Colorado, where he taught for more than twenty years. He is author of over forty books of poety, fiction, nonfiction, and translation, including the epic Gunslinger; his long-awaited Collected Poems, edited by Jennifer Dunbar Dorn, was published in December 2012.
Photographer Leroy Lucas is the author of Growing Up Black. He lives in Austin, Texas.
Matthew Hofer is associate professor of English at the University of New Mexico. He teaches and writes about twentieth-century literature, with a special interest in innovative poetry and poetics.