Minding the Darkness: A Poem for the Year 2000

Minding the Darkness completes one of the most exciting trilogies of our time, which began with Coming to Jakarta (1989) and Listening to the Candle (1992). Minding the Darkness is the final volume of Peter Dale Scott's landmark trilogy, following Coming to Jakarta and Listening to the Candle. It brings to a stunning, triumphant conclusion a remarkable and sui generis poem. "There is nothing quite like these books," as the American Book Review remarked: "Scott's trilogy, only two-thirds completed as yet, is certain to be one of the most remarkable and challenging works of our time." The apogee of Scott's long hypnotic epic poem about the political and the personal, and their darkly powerful relationships, Minding the Darkness gathers extraordinary energy by way of its Poundian collage and tight three-line stanzas. With riveting images and eerie, accumulated juxtapositions, Minding the Darkness fully bears out James Laughlin's opinion that "Not since Robert Duncan's Groundwork and before that, William Carlos Williams' Paterson, has New Directions published a long poem as important as Peter Dale Scott's."