Dunstan Thompson: On the Life & Work of a Lost American Master

Largely unknown today, Dunstan Thompson was once one of the most celebrated young poets in America. Published during and shortly after WWII, his often harrowing, homoerotic poems—many set on the battlefields and in the hospitals of the European Theater—were compared favorably to the work of W. H. Auden, Hart Crane, and Dylan Thomas. Then, as far as the general public was concerned, Dunstan Thompson disappeared. In a series of essays, interviews, letters, and clippings, this book traces Thompson's journey from a wildly successful literary enfant terrible, through his strong Catholic reawakening, and into his later years as a writer of mature, meditative, largely unpublished poetry. The first volume in the Unsung Masters Series, this book also includes a generous selection of Thompson’s very best poetry. "Reading through this lovingly assembled compendium of poems, essays, remembrances and photographs is like watching a team of preservationists restore a fallen statue that, once set aright and viewed in full, will never again be neglected. With great scruple and care, editors D. A. Powell and Kevin Prufer have turned Dunstan Thompson's reemergence into nothing short of a literary event—one whose impact will be felt for a long time to come." —Timothy Donnelly