The Robert Duncan
Page
Current News: Spring/Summer 2009Welcome to the Robert Duncan webpage. This page is an information source for materials and writings related to the American poet Robert Duncan, 1919-1988.
Earlier chapters of the book appeared in Verse, A.bacus, The Chicago Review, the Poetry Project Newsletter, Jacket, Xantippe, and No: A Journal of the Arts. Excerpts of the book are also available at Fascicle, the Modern American Poetry Website, Jacket 26 and Origin.
Also check out Jacket Magazine for some good Duncan material Jacket 28 here.
The H.D. Book will be published by University of California Press in November of 2010. The Collected Works of Robert Duncan will be published in 2013.
Thanks to a great team of interns including Clelia Scala, Michael Nicoloff, Evan Kennedy, Albert Onello, Paul Klinger, and Josh Baldwin who have been helping me out with fact-checking and information gathering.
And, if you need assistance with permissions for Duncan materials, please be aware that the Literary Estate of Robert Duncan is now part of the Jess Collins Trust. You should direct your queries to Christopher Wagstaff at 2353 Vine Street Berkeley, CA 94708-1836.
A Table of Contents for the biography, with links to the text including sections one through three in their entirety:
One: The Antediluvian World (published in the Chicago Review, Spring 1999)
Two: Native Son of the Golden West (published in the Chicago Review, Spring 1999)
Three: The Architecture (published in the Poetry Project Newsletter)
Four: A Part in the Fabulous (published in Abacus June 2001)
Five: The Wasteland (published in Jacket 26)
Six: The Fathering Dream (published in Jacket 26)
One: The Little Freshman Yes (published in NO: A Journal of the Arts 4)
Two: A Company of Women (published in NO: A Journal of the Arts 4)
Three: The Dance (published in Origin 2:2, 2007)
Four: From Ritual to Romance (published in Origin 2:3, 2007)
Five: Toward the Shaman (published in Origin 2:4, 2007)
Six: Queen of the Whores
Seven: Enlisted
Eight: Marriage
Nine: Divorce
One: The End of the War
Two: The Round Table
Three: The Poetry Festival
Four: The Venice Poem
Five: Indian Tales (published in Xantippe 4/5)
Six: The Song of the Borderguard (published in Xantippe 4/5)
Seven: The Way to Shadow Garden (published in Xantippe 4/5)
Eight: The Workshop (published in Xantippe 4/5)
Nine: Mallorca (forthcoming in Harp & Altar)
Ten: Caesar's Gate (forthcoming in Harp & Altar)
Part Four:
One: The Opening of the Field (forthcoming in Drunken Boat)
Two: New York Interlude (forthcoming in Drunken Boat)
Three: The San Francisco Scene
Four: Olson, Whitehead, and the Magic Workshop
Five: The Maidens
Six: Elfmere (published in Fascicle 2)
Seven: Night Scenes
Eight: H.D.
Nine: Go East
Ten: Apprehensions
Part Five:
One: The Will
Two: The Playhouse
Three: The Political Machine
Four: Knight Errant
Five: The Nasty Aesthetician
Six: Bending the Bow
Seven: A Night Song
Eight: Anger
Nine: The Berkeley Conference
Ten: The Sixties
Part Six:
One: The Household
Two: The Summer of Love
Three: Days of Rage
Four: Helter Skelter
Five: One Giant Step
Six: Santa Cruz Propositions
Seven: The Moly Suite
Eight: Despair in Being Tedious
Nine: The Cult of the Gods
Ten: Spring on Elm Park Road
Eleven: Domestic Scenes
Twelve: The Heart of Rime
Part Seven:
One: An Alternate Life
Two: Dover Beach
Three: The Avant-Garde
Four: Adam, Eve, and Jahweh
Five: San Francisco's Burning (published in Avant-Post,
Ed. Louis Armand, Litteraria Pragensia)
Six: The Cherubim
Seven: Alaska
Eight: Enthralled
Part Eight:
One:The Master of Rime
Two:The Albigensians
Three: Bard
Four: The Baptism of the Blood
Five: New College, The Second Wave
Six: The Year of Duncan
Seven: The Circulation of the Blood
Eight: In the Dark
Nine: Epilogos
Robert Duncan, American Poet, 1919-1988
Robert Duncan, ca. 1921, Alameda, California. Courtesy Barbara Jones.
Robert Duncan played a significant role in American literature during the twentieth century. In addition to his accomplishments as a poet and intellectual, his presence was felt across many facets of popular culture over a period of several decades. Duncan’s name figures prominently in the history of pre-Stonewall gay culture, in the emergence of bohemian socialist communities of the 1930s and 40s, in the phenomenon of the Beat Generation, in the cultural and political upheaval of the 1960s, as well as in occult and gnostic circles of the same era. During the later part of his life his work came to be distributed worldwide, and his influence as a poet is still evident today in the arenas of both mainstream and avant-garde writing.
Born in 1919 in Oakland, California, Duncan spent most of his childhood in Bakersfield, California. He began his career as a writer as a student at the University of California at Berkeley in 1936 where his colleagues included film critic Pauline Kael and painter Virginia Admiral. Duncan’s life as a writer encompasses a breadth of literary associations, including early friendships with Henry Miller, Anais Nin, Kenneth Rexroth, Tennessee Williams, James Baldwin, Paul Goodman, Ezra Pound, H.D., and William Carlos Williams.
During the 1940s, Duncan was an active contributor to The Nation and an editor of The Experimental Review. A high point of his early career came in 1944 when he published a critical essay called “The Homosexual in Society” in Politics magazine. The work established him as the first American poet to openly discuss his homosexuality in relation to the creative process and it also opened a forum for a larger discussion of homosexuality and the arts for the first time in American history.
While a resident of San Francisco for most of his adult life, Robert Duncan was most renowned as a member of the Black Mountain School of poetry, having taught at Black Mountain College in the mid-1950s, and having been associated with other Black Mountain poets such as Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, and Denise Levertov. By the 1950s, Robert Duncan had become a vital part of the American poetry scene. He took part in the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance which began with Allen Ginsberg’s historic reading of Howl in San Francisco in 1955.
Jess, ca. 1954, (standing), with Norris Embry.
Duncan also was involved with artists of the West Coast Abstract Expressionist School, including Jess Collins, a painter and collage artist who became his long-time companion. In addition, Duncan participated in occult circles surrounding the arts during the 1950s and 60s, and was associated with experimental film makers Kenneth Anger and Stan Brakhage as well as West Coast artists George Herms, Harry Jacobus, Jay DeFeo and Wallace Berman. Duncan went on to become one of the most sophisticated practitioners of avant-garde poetry in the United States during the 1960s and 70s. During the Viet Nam era he became a spokesman for the anti-war movement, writing about the war in his third major collection of poetry, Bending the Bow.
By the early 1980s, Duncan had given readings and lectures world-wide and was recognized as an international literary figure. He was also an instrumental teacher in the Poetics Program at New College of California in San Francisco where he worked alongside a younger generation of West Coast poets such as Diane diPrima and Michael Palmer. His final collections of writing, Ground Work I: Before the War and Ground Work II: In the Dark, both published in the 1980s, are testaments to a lyric tradition in Western poetry, as well as being historical documents of the troubled American landscape of the later part of the century.
Robert Duncan was the recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Guggenheim Foundation, and The National Poetry Foundation, to name a few. He was also nominated for the Pulitzer Prize Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1984. He died in San Francisco in 1988.
Duncan's major publications include: Selected Poems (City Lights Pocket Series, 1959), Letters from Flood Editions, The Opening of the Field (Grove Press, 1960/New Directions), Roots and Branches (Scribner's, 1964/New Directions), Bending the Bow (New Directions, 1968), Fictive Certainties (Essays) (New Directions, 1983), Ground Work: Before the War (New Directions, 1984), Groundwork II: In the Dark (1987), Selected Poems (1993), A Selected Prose (1995), The H.D. Book (forthcoming from University of California Press) and Collected Works (forthcoming from the University of California Press).
You can find out more about Robert Duncan's New Directions books at New Directions
Resources for Researchers: Robert Duncan's letters, manuscripts, and notebooks are housed at libraries around the country.
State University of New York at Buffalo: This is the most comprehensive collection of Duncan's manuscripts. It includes Duncan's notebooks from the 1940s through the 1980s, letters that Duncan received from many poets and artists, Duncan's manuscripts, and photographs of Duncan. Most of the Duncan materials in this collection are not included in the University's electronic library catalogue. Be sure to ask for a print version of the index of Robert Duncan's notebooks. Buffalo's Poetry/Rare Books Collection
Kent State University: This collection includes Duncan's
correspondence with James Broughton. Kent State
Special Collections
University of California at Berkeley: The Bancroft Library houses some
of Duncan's early notebooks as well as his correspondence with friends such as
Pauline Kael, Sanders Russell, Robin Blaser, and Jack Spicer. The Bancroft Library
University of California at San Diego: The Mandeville Collection houses Robert Duncan's correspondence with Donald Allen, Jerome Rothenberg, and Joanne Kyger. San Diego Library
Stanford University: Stanford University's manuscript collection includes important materials related to poets Denise Levertov and Robert Creeley. Stanford University
University of Connecticut at Storrs: This library houses Charles Olson's papers, Robert Duncan's correspondence with Michael Rumaker, and one of Duncan's notebooks from the 1950s.
University of ConnecticutThe Poetry Center: One of Robert Duncan's first homes, the Poetry Center at San Francisco State University offers a number of resources for poets and scholars. The Poetry Center
Other Important Links:
The Chicago Review's Robert Duncan Issue Essays compiled by Cary
Nelson The Helen Adam Page by Kristin Prevallet Helen
Adam Page
Check out the Harry Smith Archives— an excellent website! Harry Smith Archives
The Poetry
Project at St. Mark's Church in the Bowerie If you would like to contribute to this page email Lisa Jarnot at
ljarnot@gmail.com.