Robert Duncan (poet)
Encyclopedia
Robert Duncan was an American poet and a student of H.D.
and the Western esoteric tradition who spent most of his career in and around San Francisco. Though associated with any number of literary traditions and schools, Duncan is often identified with the poets of the New American Poetry and Black Mountain College
. Duncan's mature work emerged in the 1950s in the literary context of Beat culture
. Duncan was a key figure in the San Francisco Renaissance
.
Duncan's presence was felt across many facets of popular culture
. Duncan’s name is prominent in the history of pre-Stonewall
gay culture and in the emergence of bohemian
socialist communities of the 1930s and 40s, in the Beat Generation, and also in the cultural and political upheaval of the 1960s, influencing occult and gnostic circles of the time. During the later part of his life, Duncan's work, published by City Lights and New Directions, came to be distributed worldwide, and his influence as a poet is evident today in both mainstream and avant-garde
writing.
, as Edward Howard Duncan Jr. His mother, Marguerite Pearl Duncan, had died in childbirth and his father was unable to afford him, so in 1920 he was adopted by Edwin and Minnehaha Symmes, a family of devout Theosophist
s. They renamed him Robert Edward Symmes; it was only after a psychiatric discharge from the army in 1941 that he formed the composite of his previous names and became Robert Edward Duncan.
The Symmeses had begun planning for the child's arrival long prior to his adoption. There were terms for his adoption that had to be met: he had to be born at the time and place appointed by the astrologers
, his mother was to die shortly after giving birth, and he was to be of Anglo-Saxon
Protestant descent. His childhood was stable, and his parents were popular and social members of their community—Edwin was a prominent architect and Minnehaha devoted much of her time to volunteering and serving on committees.
Robert grew up surrounded by the occult in one form or another; he was well aware of the circumstances of his fated birth and adoption and his parents carefully interpreted his dreams. He was also told that in his lifetime he would witness a second death of civilization through a holocaust. The family adopted a second child, Barbara Eleanor Symmes, in 1920. She was born almost one year after him, on January 6 of that year, and was chosen under circumstances similar to that of her brother; her presence was expected to bring good karma
into the family.
At age three, Duncan was injured in an accident on the snow which resulted in his becoming cross-eyed and seeing double. In Roots and Branches, his second major book, he wrote, "I had the double reminder always, the vertical and horizontal displacement in vision that later became separated, specialized into a near and a far sight. One image to the right and above the other. Reach out and touch. Point to the one that is really there."
After his adopted father's death in 1936, Duncan started studying at the University of California, Berkeley
. He began writing poems inspired in part by his left wing politics and acquired a reputation as a bohemian. His friends and influences included Mary and Lilli Fabilli, Virginia Admiral
, Pauline Kael
, and Ida Bear, among others. Duncan thrived as storyteller, poet, and fledgling bohemian, but by his sophomore year he had begun to drop classes and had quit attending obligatory military drills.
In 1938, he briefly attended Black Mountain College
, but left after a dispute with faculty on the subject of the Spanish Civil War
. He spent two years in Philadelphia and then moved to Woodstock, New York
, to join a commune
run by James Cooney
. There he worked on Cooney's magazine The Phoenix and met Henry Miller
and Anaïs Nin
, who both admired his poetry. Cooney was less fond of its pagan
tendencies.
While living in Philadelphia, Duncan had his first recorded homosexual relationship with an instructor he had first met in Berkeley. In 1941 he was drafted and declared his homosexuality to get discharged. In 1943, he had his first heterosexual relationship which ended in a short, disastrous marriage. In 1944 Duncan had a relationship with the abstract expressionist painter Robert De Niro, Sr.
, the father of famed actor Robert De Niro
, Jr.
Duncan’s name figures prominently in the history of pre-Stonewall
gay culture. In 1944, Duncan wrote the landmark essay The Homosexual in Society. The essay, in which Duncan compared the plight of homosexuals with that of African Americans and Jews, was published in Dwight Macdonald
's journal Politics
. Duncan's essay is considered a pioneering treatise on the experience of homosexuals in American society given its appearance a full decade before any organized Gay rights movement (Mattachine Society
).
In 1951 Duncan met the artist Jess Collins
and began a collaboration and partnership that lasted 37 years till Duncan's death.
and Renaissance literature
and cultivated a reputation as a shamanistic figure in San Francisco poetry and artistic circles. His first book Heavenly City Earthly City was published by Bern Porter
in 1947. He also became friends with fellow poets Jack Spicer
, Robin Blaser
, James Broughton
and the novelist Philip K. Dick
. In the early 1950s he started publishing in Cid Corman
's Origin and the Black Mountain Review and in 1956 he spent a time teaching at the Black Mountain College. These connections were instrumental in getting some of the Black Mountain poets involved in the San Francisco Renaissance. He was also a prominent figure amongst a circle of San Francisco painters, including his longtime companion Jess Collins
and Norris Embry
.
in its preference for the impersonal, mythic, and hieratic, but Romantic
in its privileging of the organic, the irrational and primordial, the not-yet-articulate blindly making its way into language like salmon running upstream:
The Opening of the Field comprised short lyric poems, a recurring sequence of prose poems
called "The Structure of Rime," and a long poem called "Poem Beginning with a Line by Pindar," which draws materials from Pindar
, Francisco Goya
, Walt Whitman
, Ezra Pound
, Charles Olson
, and the myth of Persephone
into an extended visionary and ecstatic fugue in the mode of Pound's Pisan Cantos.
After Bending the Bow, he vowed to avoid the distraction of publication for fifteen years. Duncan's friend and fellow poet, Michael Palmer
, writes about this time in his essay "Ground Work: On Robert Duncan" :
H.D.
H.D. was an American poet, novelist and memoirist known for her association with the early 20th century avant-garde Imagist group of poets such as Ezra Pound and Richard Aldington...
and the Western esoteric tradition who spent most of his career in and around San Francisco. Though associated with any number of literary traditions and schools, Duncan is often identified with the poets of the New American Poetry and Black Mountain College
Black Mountain poets
The Black Mountain poets, sometimes called projectivist poets, were a group of mid 20th century American avant-garde or postmodern poets centered on Black Mountain College.-Background:...
. Duncan's mature work emerged in the 1950s in the literary context of Beat culture
Beat generation
The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...
. Duncan was a key figure in the San Francisco Renaissance
San Francisco Renaissance
The term San Francisco Renaissance is used as a global designation for a range of poetic activity centered on San Francisco and which brought it to prominence as a hub of the American poetic avant-garde. However, others The term San Francisco Renaissance is used as a global designation for a range...
.
Overview
Not only a poet, but also a public intellectualIntellectual
An intellectual is a person who uses intelligence and critical or analytical reasoning in either a professional or a personal capacity.- Terminology and endeavours :"Intellectual" can denote four types of persons:...
Duncan's presence was felt across many facets of popular culture
Popular culture
Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...
. Duncan’s name is prominent in the history of pre-Stonewall
Stonewall riots
The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City...
gay culture and in the emergence of bohemian
Bohemianism
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...
socialist communities of the 1930s and 40s, in the Beat Generation, and also in the cultural and political upheaval of the 1960s, influencing occult and gnostic circles of the time. During the later part of his life, Duncan's work, published by City Lights and New Directions, came to be distributed worldwide, and his influence as a poet is evident today in both mainstream and avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
writing.
Birth and early life
Duncan was born in Oakland, CaliforniaOakland, California
Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...
, as Edward Howard Duncan Jr. His mother, Marguerite Pearl Duncan, had died in childbirth and his father was unable to afford him, so in 1920 he was adopted by Edwin and Minnehaha Symmes, a family of devout Theosophist
Theosophy
Theosophy, in its modern presentation, is a spiritual philosophy developed since the late 19th century. Its major themes were originally described mainly by Helena Blavatsky , co-founder of the Theosophical Society...
s. They renamed him Robert Edward Symmes; it was only after a psychiatric discharge from the army in 1941 that he formed the composite of his previous names and became Robert Edward Duncan.
The Symmeses had begun planning for the child's arrival long prior to his adoption. There were terms for his adoption that had to be met: he had to be born at the time and place appointed by the astrologers
Astrology
Astrology consists of a number of belief systems which hold that there is a relationship between astronomical phenomena and events in the human world...
, his mother was to die shortly after giving birth, and he was to be of Anglo-Saxon
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
Protestant descent. His childhood was stable, and his parents were popular and social members of their community—Edwin was a prominent architect and Minnehaha devoted much of her time to volunteering and serving on committees.
Robert grew up surrounded by the occult in one form or another; he was well aware of the circumstances of his fated birth and adoption and his parents carefully interpreted his dreams. He was also told that in his lifetime he would witness a second death of civilization through a holocaust. The family adopted a second child, Barbara Eleanor Symmes, in 1920. She was born almost one year after him, on January 6 of that year, and was chosen under circumstances similar to that of her brother; her presence was expected to bring good karma
Karma
Karma in Indian religions is the concept of "action" or "deed", understood as that which causes the entire cycle of cause and effect originating in ancient India and treated in Hindu, Jain, Buddhist and Sikh philosophies....
into the family.
At age three, Duncan was injured in an accident on the snow which resulted in his becoming cross-eyed and seeing double. In Roots and Branches, his second major book, he wrote, "I had the double reminder always, the vertical and horizontal displacement in vision that later became separated, specialized into a near and a far sight. One image to the right and above the other. Reach out and touch. Point to the one that is really there."
After his adopted father's death in 1936, Duncan started studying at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
. He began writing poems inspired in part by his left wing politics and acquired a reputation as a bohemian. His friends and influences included Mary and Lilli Fabilli, Virginia Admiral
Virginia Admiral
Virginia Holton Admiral or Virginia De Niro was an American painter and poet. Her former husband was painter Robert De Niro, Sr., and they were the parents of actor Robert De Niro....
, Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Earlier in her career, her work appeared in City Lights, McCall's and The New Republic....
, and Ida Bear, among others. Duncan thrived as storyteller, poet, and fledgling bohemian, but by his sophomore year he had begun to drop classes and had quit attending obligatory military drills.
In 1938, he briefly attended Black Mountain College
Black Mountain College
Black Mountain College, a school founded in 1933 in Black Mountain, North Carolina, was a new kind of college in the United States in which the study of art was seen to be central to a liberal arts education, and in which John Dewey's principles of education played a major role...
, but left after a dispute with faculty on the subject of the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
. He spent two years in Philadelphia and then moved to Woodstock, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, to join a commune
Commune (intentional community)
A commune is an intentional community of people living together, sharing common interests, property, possessions, resources, and, in some communes, work and income. In addition to the communal economy, consensus decision-making, non-hierarchical structures and ecological living have become...
run by James Cooney
James Cooney
James Cooney was an Irish-American lawyer and Democratic politician from Marshall, Missouri. He represented Missouri's 7th congressional district in the U.S. House from 1897 until 1903. He was born in County Limerick, Ireland...
. There he worked on Cooney's magazine The Phoenix and met Henry Miller
Henry Miller
Henry Valentine Miller was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is...
and Anaïs Nin
Anaïs Nin
Anaïs Nin was a French-Cuban author, based at first in France and later in the United States, who published her journals, which span more than 60 years, beginning when she was 11 years old and ending shortly before her death, her erotic literature, and short stories...
, who both admired his poetry. Cooney was less fond of its pagan
Paganism
Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....
tendencies.
Duncan and homosexuality
|
| Michael Palmer Michael Palmer Michael Palmer is an American poet and translator. He attended Harvard University where he earned a BA in French and a MA in Comparative Literature. He has worked extensively with Contemporary dance for over thirty years and has collaborated with many composers and visual artists... |
While living in Philadelphia, Duncan had his first recorded homosexual relationship with an instructor he had first met in Berkeley. In 1941 he was drafted and declared his homosexuality to get discharged. In 1943, he had his first heterosexual relationship which ended in a short, disastrous marriage. In 1944 Duncan had a relationship with the abstract expressionist painter Robert De Niro, Sr.
Robert De Niro, Sr.
Robert Henry De Niro, Sr. was an American abstract expressionist painter and the father of actor Robert De Niro.-Life and career:...
, the father of famed actor Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro, Jr. is an American actor, director and producer. His first major film roles were in Bang the Drum Slowly and Mean Streets, both in 1973...
, Jr.
Duncan’s name figures prominently in the history of pre-Stonewall
Stonewall
The word Stonewall may refer to* a stone wall* a verb meaning "to refuse to cooperate, especially in supplying information" -Games and entertainment:* "Stonewall structure" of pawns in the chess opening theory:** Stonewall Attack...
gay culture. In 1944, Duncan wrote the landmark essay The Homosexual in Society. The essay, in which Duncan compared the plight of homosexuals with that of African Americans and Jews, was published in Dwight Macdonald
Dwight Macdonald
Dwight Macdonald was an American writer, editor, film critic, social critic, philosopher, and political radical.-Early life and career:...
's journal Politics
Politics (journal)
Politics was a journal founded and edited by Dwight Macdonald from 1944 to 1949.Macdonald had previously been editor at Partisan Review from 1937 to 1943, but after falling out with its publishers, quit to start Politics as a rival publication, first on a monthly basis and then as a...
. Duncan's essay is considered a pioneering treatise on the experience of homosexuals in American society given its appearance a full decade before any organized Gay rights movement (Mattachine Society
Mattachine Society
The Mattachine Society, founded in 1950, was one of the earliest homophile organizations in the United States, probably second only to Chicago’s Society for Human Rights . Harry Hay and a group of Los Angeles male friends formed the group to protect and improve the rights of homosexuals...
).
In 1951 Duncan met the artist Jess Collins
Jess Collins
Jess Collins , simply known today as Jess, was an American visual artist.- Biography :Jess was born Burgess Franklin Collins in Long Beach, California. He was drafted into the military and worked on the production of plutonium for the Manhattan Project...
and began a collaboration and partnership that lasted 37 years till Duncan's death.
San Francisco
Duncan returned to San Francisco in 1945 and was befriended by Helen Adam, Madeline Gleason, and Kenneth Rexroth (with whom he had been in correspondence for some time). He returned to Berkeley to study MedievalMedieval literature
Medieval literature is a broad subject, encompassing essentially all written works available in Europe and beyond during the Middle Ages . The literature of this time was composed of religious writings as well as secular works...
and Renaissance literature
Renaissance literature
Renaissance Literature refers to the period in European literature that began in Italy during the 14th century and spread around Europe through the 17th century...
and cultivated a reputation as a shamanistic figure in San Francisco poetry and artistic circles. His first book Heavenly City Earthly City was published by Bern Porter
Bern Porter
Bernard Harden "Bern" Porter was an American artist, writer, publisher, performer, and scientist.In 2010 his work was recognized by an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.- Biography :...
in 1947. He also became friends with fellow poets Jack Spicer
Jack Spicer
Jack Spicer was an American poet often identified with the San Francisco Renaissance. In 2009, My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer won the American Book Award for poetry.-Life and work:...
, Robin Blaser
Robin Blaser
Robin Francis Blaser was an author and poet in both the United States and Canada.-Personal background:Born in Denver, Colorado, Blaser grew up in Idaho, and came to Berkeley, California, in 1944. There he met Jack Spicer and Robert Duncan, becoming a key figure in the San Francisco Renaissance of...
, James Broughton
James Broughton
James Broughton was an American poet, and poetic filmmaker. He was part of the San Francisco Renaissance...
and the novelist Philip K. Dick
Philip K. Dick
Philip Kindred Dick was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments and altered...
. In the early 1950s he started publishing in Cid Corman
Cid Corman
Cid Corman was an American poet, translator and editor, most notably of Origin, who was a key figure in the history of American poetry in the second half of the 20th century.-Early life and writing:...
's Origin and the Black Mountain Review and in 1956 he spent a time teaching at the Black Mountain College. These connections were instrumental in getting some of the Black Mountain poets involved in the San Francisco Renaissance. He was also a prominent figure amongst a circle of San Francisco painters, including his longtime companion Jess Collins
Jess Collins
Jess Collins , simply known today as Jess, was an American visual artist.- Biography :Jess was born Burgess Franklin Collins in Long Beach, California. He was drafted into the military and worked on the production of plutonium for the Manhattan Project...
and Norris Embry
Norris Embry
Norris Embry was an American neo-expressionist artist born on January 14, 1921 in Louisville, Kentucky.He grew up in East Orange, New Jersey outside New York City and Evanston, Illinois in the Chicago area, attending public schools through high school. Later, he studied at St. John's College in...
.
Mature works
During the 1960s, Duncan achieved considerable artistic and critical success with three books; The Opening of the Field (1960), Roots and Branches (1964), and Bending the Bow (1968). These are generally considered to be his most significant works. His poetry is modernistModernist literature
Modernist literature is sub-genre of Modernism, a predominantly European movement beginning in the early 20th century that was characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional aesthetic forms...
in its preference for the impersonal, mythic, and hieratic, but Romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
in its privileging of the organic, the irrational and primordial, the not-yet-articulate blindly making its way into language like salmon running upstream:
Neither our vices nor our virtues
further the poem. "They came up
and died
just like they do every year
on the rocks."
The poem
feeds upon thought, feeling, impulse,
to breed itself,
a spiritual urgency at the dark ladders leaping.
The Opening of the Field comprised short lyric poems, a recurring sequence of prose poems
Prose poetry
Prose poetry is poetry written in prose instead of using verse but preserving poetic qualities such as heightened imagery and emotional effects.-Characteristics:Prose poetry can be considered either primarily poetry or prose, or a separate genre altogether...
called "The Structure of Rime," and a long poem called "Poem Beginning with a Line by Pindar," which draws materials from Pindar
Pindar
Pindar , was an Ancient Greek lyric poet. Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, his work is the best preserved. Quintilian described him as "by far the greatest of the nine lyric poets, in virtue of his inspired magnificence, the beauty of his thoughts and figures, the rich...
, Francisco Goya
Francisco Goya
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker regarded both as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns. Goya was a court painter to the Spanish Crown, and through his works was both a commentator on and chronicler of his era...
, Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman
Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...
, Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
, Charles Olson
Charles Olson
Charles Olson , was a second generation American modernist poet who was a link between earlier figures such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and the New American poets, which includes the New York School, the Black Mountain School, the Beat poets, and the San Francisco Renaissance...
, and the myth of Persephone
Persephone
In Greek mythology, Persephone , also called Kore , is the daughter of Zeus and the harvest-goddess Demeter, and queen of the underworld; she was abducted by Hades, the god-king of the underworld....
into an extended visionary and ecstatic fugue in the mode of Pound's Pisan Cantos.
After Bending the Bow, he vowed to avoid the distraction of publication for fifteen years. Duncan's friend and fellow poet, Michael Palmer
Michael Palmer
Michael Palmer is an American poet and translator. He attended Harvard University where he earned a BA in French and a MA in Comparative Literature. He has worked extensively with Contemporary dance for over thirty years and has collaborated with many composers and visual artists...
, writes about this time in his essay "Ground Work: On Robert Duncan" :
Collected Writings
The Collected Writings of Robert Duncan will begin appearing in January 2011 with the publication of Volume One: The H.D. Book. There will be a total of six volumes including The H.D. Book:--- Early Poems, Plays, and Prose;-- Later Poems, Plays, and Prose;--- Critical Prose--- and two further volumes with contents to be determined.Selected bibliography
- Selected Poems (City LightsCity Lights BookstoreCity Lights is an independent bookstore-publisher combination that specializes in world literature, the arts, and progressive politics. It also houses the nonprofit City Lights Foundation, which publishes selected titles related to San Francisco culture. It was founded in 1953 by poet Lawrence...
Pocket Series, 1959) - Letters 1953-56 (reprint: Flood Editions, Chicago, 2003)
- The Opening of the Field (Grove PressGrove PressGrove Press is an American publishing imprint that was founded in 1951. Imprints include: Black Cat, Evergreen, Venus Library, Zebra. Barney Rosset purchased the company in 1951 and turned it into an alternative book press in the United States. The Atlantic Monthly Press, under the aegis of its...
, 1960/New Directions) PS3507.U629 O6 - Roots and Branches (Scribner's, 1964/New Directions)
- Medea at Kolchis; the maiden head (Berkeley: Oyez, 1965) PS3507.U629 M4
- Of the war: passages 22–27 (Berkeley: Oyez, 1966) PS3507.U629 O42
- Bending the Bow (New Directions, 1968)
- The Years As Catches: First poems (1939–1946) (Berkeley, CA: Oyez, 1966)
- Play time, pseudo stein (S.n. Tenth Muse, 1969) Case / PS3507 .U629 P55
- Caesar's gate: poems 1949-50 with paste-ups by Jess. (s.l. Sand Dollar, 1972) PS3507.U629 C3
- Selected poems by Robert Duncan (San Francisco, City Lights Books. Millwood, NY: Kraus Reprint Co., 1973, 1959) PN6101 .P462 v.2 no.8-14,Suppl.
- An ode and Arcadia (Berkeley: Ark P, 1974) PS3507.U629 O3
- Medieval scenes 1950 and 1959 ( Kent, Ohio: The Kent SU Libraries, 1978) Case / PS3507.U629 M43
- The five songs (Glendale, CA: Reagh, 1981) Case / PS3507 .U629 F5
- Fictive Certainties (Essays) (NY:New Directions, 1983)
- Ground Work: Before the War (NY:New Directions, 1984) PS3507 .U629 G7
- Ground Work II: In the Dark (NY:New Directions, 1987) PS3507 .U629 G69
- Selected Poems edited by Robert BertholfRobert BertholfRobert J. Bertholf is an author and professor at the University at Buffalo. He is the Charles D. Abbott Scholar-In-Residence and former curator of The Poetry Collection at the university....
(NY:New Directions, 1993) - A Selected Prose (NY:New Directions, 1995)
- Copy Book Entries, transcribed by Robert J. Bertholf (Buffalo, NY: Meow Press, 1996)
- The Letters of Robert Duncan and Denise LevertovDenise Levertov-Early life and influences:Levertov was born and grew up in Ilford, Essex.Couzyn, Jeni Contemporary Women Poets. Bloodaxe, p74 Her mother, Beatrice Spooner-Jones Levertoff, came from a small mining village in North Wales...
(Robert J. Bertholf & Albert Gelpi, eds.) (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004) - Ground Work: Before the War / In the Dark, Introduction by Michael PalmerMichael PalmerMichael Palmer is an American poet and translator. He attended Harvard University where he earned a BA in French and a MA in Comparative Literature. He has worked extensively with Contemporary dance for over thirty years and has collaborated with many composers and visual artists...
(NY:New Directions, 2006) - The H.D. Book (The Collected Writings of Robert Duncan), Edited by Michael Boughn & Victor Coleman (University of California Press, 2011). ISBN 978-0-520-26075-7
External links
- Robert Duncan reads in 1969 his poem Structure of Rime IV.
- Duncan at Modern American Poetry
- The Robert Duncan Papers at Washington University in St. Louis
- "Ground Work: On Robert Duncan" Michael Palmer's "Introduction" to a combined edition of Ground Work: Before the War, and Ground Work II: In the Dark, published by New Directions in April 2006.
- from THE AMBASSADOR FROM VENUS an excerpt of the Duncan biography by Lisa JarnotLisa JarnotLisa Jarnot is an American poet and translator. She has published several volumes of poetry. She is an anti-war activist, works as a horticulturalist and lives in Sunnyside, Queens.-Bibliography :*The Fall of Orpheus, Shuffaloff Press, 1993....
- "The Lure of the God: Robert Duncan on Translating Rilke" see also Rilke
- "Genreading and Underwriting: A Few Soundings and Probes into Robert Duncan's 'Ground Work'" essay by Clément Oudart
- Robert Duncan's Life and Career
- H.D.Book e-bookE-bookAn electronic book is a book-length publication in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, and produced on, published through, and readable on computers or other electronic devices. Sometimes the equivalent of a conventional printed book, e-books can also be born digital...
of unpublished (as of 2006) manuscript by Duncan. - Wrath Moves In the Music: Robert Duncan, Laura Riding, Craft and Force in Cold War Poetics essay by Jeff Hamilton at Jacket Magazine
- Magic & Images/ Images & Magic This piece is by David Levi-Strauss who studied with Duncan 25 years ago in the short-lived Poetics Program at New College of CaliforniaNew College of CaliforniaNew College of California was founded in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1971 by former Gonzaga University President, Father John Leary. After 37 years, it ceased operations in early 2008....
in San Francisco which Duncan coordinated from 1980 to 1983. - Modern American Poetry
- Academy of American Poets