Author and editor Ed Gorman, who "found literary success as a mystery and crime novelist and short story writer," died October 14, the Cedar Rapids Gazette reported. He was 74. Gorman "lived and breathed books and writers," his wife Carol said, adding that his role as a mentor to other writers was profound. She "often found him on the phone with budding writers or convincing editors and agents to read those new writers' material," the Gazette noted.
"He's not as famous as he should be, but in the writing community he was about as respected as you could be," said Iowa City author and book reviewer Rob Cline. "All of us in the area, we should be proud that a writer of this caliber was among us for so many years."
Locus Online noted that Gorman "was best known as a crime and horror writer and anthologist, and also wrote SF. He published dozens of books, beginning with novel Rough Cut (1984). Most of his works of genre interest were published pseudonymously. As Daniel Ransom, he wrote many horror and SF titles.... Under the name Richard Driscoll he and Kevin D. Randle co-wrote the SF Star Precinct trilogy, beginning with Star Precinct (1992). The majority of books appearing under Gorman's own byline were crime and mystery, notably the Robert Payne series, the Sam McCaine series, the Jack Dwyer series, and the Dev Conrad series. He also wrote Westerns."
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David Antin, "whose improvised performances, which he called 'talk poems,' introduced a radical new form into American poetry in the 1970s," died October 11, the New York Times reported. He was 84. After editing tape-recorded performances, "he committed his poems to the page" in the collections Talking (1972), Talking at the Boundaries (1976) and What It Means to Be Avant-Garde (1993), the Times wrote, adding that Antin's "revision of late modernist poetry, rejected by writers like Robert Pinsky and critics like Harold Bloom as no poetry at all, favored an open line, absurdism and a direct connection to the oral poetry of the ancient bards."
His other books include How Long Is the Present: Selected Talk Poems of David Antin; Talking; i never knew what time it was; and Radical Coherency: Selected Essays on Art and Literature, 1966 to 2005.