January 12, 2009

The Poetry of Robert Duncan

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Last week was the birthday of the remarkable, yet remarkably little known poet Robert Duncan (1919-1988). A defining member of the San Francisco Renaissance, along with Jack Spicer and Robin Blaser, among other greats. I encountered Duncan’s work during my Jr. year at Naropa University and have been a fan ever since. Just this week I grabbed his book, Bending the Bow off my shelf and thumbed through to find the poem of the same name...

Bending the Bow

We’ve our business to attend Day’s duties,

bend back the bow in dreams as we may

til the end rimes in the taut string

with the sending. Reveries are rivers and flow

where the cold light gleams reflecting the window upon the

surface of the table,

the presst-glass creamer, the pewter sugar bowl, the litter

of coffee cups and saucers,

carnations painted growing upon whose surfaces. The whole

composition of surfaces leads into the other

current disturbing

what I would take hold of. I’d been…(read on)

Duncan always had a precise cadence. Developed by exacting line breaks and punctuation, the poem reads like a dream or a voice drawing the reader into deep trance. Although Duncan’s vocal style never had the power of Ginsberg or Amiri Baraka, his words are best spoken aloud (as is the case of any poem). So if your curious to hear him, check out his reading of My Mother Would Be a Falconress, I think you’ll find the power lies in the exact nature of his words and rhythms rather than in his shear instrumental force, but see for yourself. And for anything poetic including recordings of Duncan’s Poems and Lectures check out the Naropa Archive Project, one of the largest collections in the country.

Often I am Permitted to Return to the Meadow

as if it were a scene made-up by the mind,

that is not mine, but is a made place,

that is mine, it is so near to the heart,

an eternal pasture folded in all thought

so that there is a hall therein

that is a made place, created by light

wherefrom the shadows that are forms fall.

Wherefrom fall all architectures I am

I say are likenesses of the First Beloved

whose flowers are flames lit to the Lady.

She it is Queen Under The Hill