Edwin Rolfe (1909-54) is best known as the poet laureate of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, the Americans who volunteered to help defend the elected Spanish government during its 1936-39 civil war. His career began in the revolutionary Left in New York in the 1920s and continued into the 1950s, when Rolfe wrote searing poetry attacking the McCarthy-era witch-hunts. Praise for Rolfe's Collected Poems: ''An impressive body of work, set in its historical, literary, and biographical context by Cary Nelson's masterly introduction.'' -- Bernard Knox, New York Review of Books ''Rolfe writes with artistic and philosophical authority, great skill, powerful feeling, and considerable appeal. His Spanish Civil War poems may be the best written by an American writer.'' -- Reginald Gibbons, editor of TriQuarterly ''With Rolfe's as its inaugural volume, no poetry project seems more necessary at this time and in this place than a series of volumes by radical poets.'' -- Philip Levine
