Selected Poems (Revised and Enlarged Edition) (New Directions Paperbook) [Paperback]

Robert Duncan (Author), Robert J. Bertholf (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 17, 1997 | Series: New Directions Paperbook

This second edition of the late Robert Duncan's Selected Poems, first published in 1993, includes eleven additional poems and excerpts.

Duncan, like Dante, was a poet of cosmic imagination, intensely aware of his and poetry's role in the ever-expanding logos of creation. His Selected Poems, first published in 1993, is a "useful and portable compilation," says critic Tom Clark, that "provides the most comprehensive available look at the career of the Bay Area's greatest lyric poet." Editor Robert J. Bertholf has enlarged the original collection to include eleven additional poems and excerpts. The second edition of the Selected Poems fully fleshes out the retrospective of works chosen from the whole of Duncan's writing life. From his early poems through his final Ground Work volumes, as well as his serial poems, "Structures of Rime" and "Passages," composed over the course of thirty years, there emerges a prophetic voice of great perception.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Duncan (1919-1987) was one of the true masters of contemporary American poetry. His oeuvre is by turns lyrical, experimental, archaic, visionary and political. His most innovative works ("Structure of Rime" and "Passages") have been epic in nature and interspersed among shorter poems throughout several volumes, so that it has been virtually impossible to get a sense of his full poetic powers without reading his mature books, from 1960 on, in order. Bertholf's selections are so attuned to the essentials of Duncan's ( Ground Work: Before the War ; Roots and Branches ) writing--the idiosyncratic spellings, the attention and respect given the muses, the horrific sense of war--that even those familiar with the whole body of Duncan's work will become more sensitized to his recurring imagery and consistency of thought pattern through this collection. "Writing is first a search in obedience," he says in a relatively early poem. And, varying this concept in one of his final poems, written during a long, painful illness: "What Angel, what Gift of the Poem, has brought into my / body / this sickness of living?" In Bertholf's brief, insightful introduction, he makes necessary connections between the often-neglected early work and the later masterpieces.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

This revised and enlarged edition of selections from Duncan's ten major collections comes only a few years after the last (LJ 3/1/93), incorporating minor changes Duncan made before his death in 1988, and adding only 11 poems, all written before the mid-1960s. A romantic with a passion for experimentation, Duncan assimilated and transformed influences as diverse as Dante, Blake, Eliot, and Stein, embroidering a dense tapestry of allusive and emotionally generous vatic poetry for a postwar audience haunted by a sense of fragmentation and loss, yet energized by newfound aesthetic and spiritual possibilities. If at times his poems echo the intonation of ancient texts or trust too much to the reader's scholarly inclinations, they also revel in the here and now ("And it is the beauty of where we have been living that is the poetry of the hour.") with equal conviction. Recommended, but note that this edition differs only marginally from 1993's, and is no substitute for a much needed collected poems.?Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib., Ithaca, N.Y.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 172 pages
• Publisher: New Directions; Revised and Enlarged Edition edition (April 17, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811213455
• ISBN-13: 978-0811213455
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #868,042 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, February 10, 2009

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J. Hussey (Athens, GA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Selected Poems (Revised and Enlarged Edition) (New Directions Paperbook) (Paperback)

Fine as an introduction to Duncan, but not for serious study. At best, this is a "Greatest Hits" record--though that said, it's a bit like buying Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits. It's good in that it touches every portion of his career, but since Duncan worked so fiercely in the poetics of the series and the idea of "the book of poetry," ultimately it leaves the reader wanting.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect (for what it is), October 19, 2009

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Trystero (Fredericktown, MO) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Selected Poems (Revised and Enlarged Edition) (New Directions Paperbook) (Paperback)

While a bit disappointing and limited (as all "Selected Poems" will be), this volume succeeds as an introduction to Robert Duncan's impressive body of work. Particularly of interest are the excerpts from early volumes (pre- "The Opening of the Field" and presumably out of print) which evidence Duncan's evolution. Along with Jack Spicer and Robin Blaser, Robert Duncan revolutionized American poetry during the Berkeley renaissance; their triumvirate of influence, more so than any combination of Beat writers, defined homosexual poetics in the twentieth century. The addition of Kenneth Rexroth and Weldon Kees to the list of great Californian poets of that period makes a good case for it being the most underrated generation of American poets. Sadly, unlike the other four, Duncan has never had a "Collected Poems" assembled for him. Let's hope that someday soon, that will be rectified.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unsung American Bard, September 12, 2009

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Ger Agrey-thatcher - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Selected Poems (Hardcover)

"How will we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" cries the Psalmist. Robert Duncan was an orphan, a modernist and lyticist. With HD and her contemporaries, he sang in a deep and devout voice from the American wilderness.

No "selected" collection does any poet justice, and Duncan is best read complete. But this volume contains favorites and is large enough to cover both the holy and secular grounds that Duncan mapped.

As always, read inwardly and aloud. You will find wonder and treasure here.