After initiating a critical involvement with new poetics in dialogue with his mentor Charles Olson at Black Mountain College in the 1950s, Dorn wandered the transmountain West following the variable winds of writing and casual employment until the mid1960s, when a time of trial and change resulted in the beginnings of the groundbreaking long poem Gunslinger. This first biography by his longtime friend and fellow poet Tom Clarkauthor of previous biographies of Jack Kerouac, Ted Berrigan, Charles Olson and Robert Creeleyoffers a record of Dorns life and work drawing upon fresh testimony, letters and unpublished manuscript material provided by surviving family members.