Let's begin with the thought that Duncan, in his poetics, embodies a series of paradoxes that at once reflect and reflect upon the antecedent poetics of what he called his "modernist masters." Such paradoxes were what struck me when I first encountered Duncan at the Vancouver Poetry Conference, staged at the University of British Columbia in 1963. I had come to know Duncan's work initially through Donald Allen's pathbreaking anthology, The New American Poetry, then through The Opening of the Field, published by Grove Press in 1960 and finally through a copy of the long out-of-print Poems 1948-49 which I'd found on the back shelves of Gordon Cairnie's Grolier Bookshop in Cambridge. I had been greatly impressed by the exploratory audacity of the work, by the manipulation of complex, resistant harmonies, and by the kinetic idea of what Duncan called "composition by field," whereby all elements of the poem are potentially equally active in the composition as "events" of the poem:
The artist, after Dante's poetics, works with all parts of the poem as polysemous, taking each thing of the composition as generative of meaning, a response to and a contribution to the building form . . . . So the artist of abundancies delites in puns, interlocking and separating figures, plays of things missing or things appearing "out of order" that remind us that all orders have their justification in an order of orders only our faith as we work addresses. Were all in harmony to our ears, we would dwell in the dreadful smugness in which our mere human rationality relegates what it cannot cope with to the "irrational," as if the totality of creation were without ratios.
(from Bending the Bow, Introduction, p.ix)
Statements such as this appeared to lay the ground for a prosody and poetics in radical opposition to the institutionally dominant Anglo-American formalism of the time, to propose a prosody and a poetics responsive to the most recent developments in music and the visual arts, yet anchored, through Dante and many others to a "spirit of romance" animating human history.
As an engaged, twenty-year old student of modernist principles, however, I was disturbed by Duncan's free use of ornament, of archaic diction and grandiose rhetoric, and by the neoplatonic aura surrounding much of the work. (Such "disturbance" is an intentional function of Duncan's poetics as he challenges assumptions and boundaries both to the right and to the left.) At Vancouver, in the freewheeling discussions with Denise Levertov, Robert Creeley, Charles Olson and Margaret Avison, Duncan would continually queer the pitch. Into a consideration of projective verse, he would introduce Mallarmé; at the mention of Whitehead's Process and Reality, he might offer Boehme, William Carlos Williams, Edith Sitwell; to Ginsberg's proposition of "spontaneous bop prosody" he would counter with the "Law we are given to follow." Thus, even among sympathetic peers (though Ginsberg and Duncan were not often in sympathy), Duncan felt the need to assert the force of heretical opinion, which in turn for him was grounded in the authority of timeless heretical gnosis. The poem was to stand as a "grand collage," a constellation of myriad myths and voices from an eternal counter-tradition, as well as of impulses, accidents and intrusions, disciplined and informed by an attention to the poem's ratios or measures. Into its field, "where sympathies and aversions mingle," closed and open forms, harmonies and disharmonies, the mythic and the mundane, the hieratic and the demotic, were to be equally welcomed. Whence Pound's plaint, during a visit by Duncan to St. Elizabeth's, that Duncan had put back in everything they had labored so long to take out.
Duncan's project can be seen in part as an effort to make place once again for the artifice, affect, and lore modernism had repressed. However, this was achieved not in reaction against modernism (and certainly not for the sake of decor), but as an extension of its exploratory impulse and a reading or revealing of its progressive, Romantic philosophical and aesthetic origins.
Duncan interprets this Romantic impulse as an eternal one, alive in the perverse, resistant voices of poets, but equally so in the syncretistic impulse of Hellinistic philosophy, the songs of the Cathars, gnostic texts, Oz, Alice, Freud, George MacDonald, George Herriman, and others. All are threads in the fabric of mythic lore. "Myth," states Duncan at the beginning of The Truth and Life of Myth, "is the story of what cannot be told, as mystery is the scene of what cannot be revealed, and the mystic gnosis the thing known that cannot be known." At another point he writes:
Myth, for Dante, for Shakespeare, for Milton, was the poet-lore handed down in the tradition from poet to poet. It was the very matter of Poetry, the nature of the divine world as poets had testified to it; the poetic piety of each poet, his acknowledgment of what he had found true Poetry, worked to conserve that matter. And, for each, there was in the form of their work--the literary vision, the play of actors upon the stage, and the didactic epic--a kind of magic, for back of these forms we surmise distant origins in the rituals toward ecstasy of earliest Man. Once the operations of their art began they were transported from their sense of myth as literary element into the immediacy of the poem where reality was mythological.
(from The Truth and Life of Myth, p.39)
By implication, each poem comes in response to this Traditio and is a kind of "listening in," as well as an ec-stasis or standing outside oneself. It is in this sense that Duncan will refuse the claim of originality and insist that he is a "derivative" poet, a poet of near infinite derivations. The statement is a provocation--another assault on the Modernist credo--but it is also evidence of Duncan's subversive playfulness, and his delight in demolishing expectations. It would be difficult to imagine a more willfully idiosyncratic position for such a poet at such a time. Yet it is grounded, ultimately, and perhaps once again paradoxically, in his conviction regarding poetry's responsibility toward and derivation from the immediate world, that is, a world of multiple immediacies, socio-political, sexual, psychic, and imaginal.
Robert Duncan grew up, the adopted son of a theosophical family, in the town of Bakersfield, California. As Michael Davidson has noted in his book, The San Francisco Renaissance, the interpretive methods of theosophical reading of both text and world deeply influenced the poet's sense of the ways meanings inhere and things correspond:
"This charged, participatory act of reading gains definition through contemporary theories of 'open field verse,' to be sure, but for Duncan its origins can be found in the theosophical tradition that he inherited from his adopted family. For his parents, 'the truth of things was esoteric (locked inside) or occult (masked by) the apparent . . . .' Within this environment every event was significant as an element in a larger, cosmological scheme. Although Duncan has never practised within any theosophical religion, he has easily translated its terms into works like Freud's Interpretation of Dreams. . . . Within both theosophical and Freudian hermeneutics, story is not simply a diversion or fiction, but an 'everlasting omen of what is.'"
(from The San Francisco Renaissance, p.132)
This childhood also brought Duncan early knowledge of his homosexuality, which would play a central role in articulating the complex thematics of his work. Long before it was safe to do so, Duncan "came out" in both his personal and public lives. In 1944, Dwight Macdonald's Politics published Duncan's still-controversial article, "The Homosexual in Society." This caused John Crowe Ransom to withdraw Duncan's "African Elegy" from its scheduled publication in the Kenyon Review. Many lines of battle were being drawn at once.
My own friendship with Duncan, and with his companion, the painter Jess, dates from the early 1970's. By then the days of the Berkeley Renaissance, with its youthful community around Duncan, Jack Spicer and Robin Blaser, and the latter days of the much more public San Francisco Renaissance, were over. Jack Spicer had died in 1965. Robin Blaser had moved to Vancouver, where his work in poetry and poetics continued to thrive and deepen. Robert became the central figure in a new, activist poetic community that would emerge in part from the New College of California Poetics Program, of which he was the head. He taught as he spoke as he wrote, leading students on a wild, non-linear ride "in search of the subject." He was much the same in personal conversation, insistently enthusiastic, combative, heuristic, making associational leaps and challenging you to follow across the open field and, at times, through the dark wood. He waged, intermittently, a visceral, not always coherent battle against the Language Poets, suspecting them of hidden orthodoxies and of repressing the dimension of Spirit, with that troublesome, rebarbative capital letter. The last afternoon I visited him, the day before his death in 1988, I mentioned that my daughter and I were reading the third volume of the Oz tales together. He paused for a moment, then his face lit up, "Oh! The one with the heads!"
[The preceding article originally appeared in the Spring 1997 issue of American Poet, the biannual journal of The Academy of American Poets. Copyright © 1997 by Michael Palmer. Used with permission. All rights reserved. A related posting, “Michael Palmer on Shelley,” appeared here on August 23, 2008.]
Reconfiguring Romanticism (46): Michael Palmer on “Robert Duncan and Romantic Synthesis”
Posted by
Lidya Endzo Kun iLLa
On
6:49 AM
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Tattoos Picture Page 1
Tattoos Picture Page 2
Tattoos Picture Page 3
Tattoos Picture Page 4
Tattoos Picture Page 5
Tattoos Picture Page 6
Tattoos Picture Page 7
Tattoos Picture Page 8
Tattoos Picture Page 9
Tattoos Picture Page 10
Tattoos Picture Page 11
Tattoos Picture Page 12
Tattoos Picture Page 13
Tattoos Picture Page 14
Tattoos Picture Page 15
Tattoos Picture Page 16
Tattoos Picture Page 17
Tattoos Picture Page 18
Tattoos Picture Page 19
Tattoos Picture Page 20
Tattoos Picture Page 21
Tattoos Picture Page 22
Tattoos Picture Page 23
Tattoos Picture Page 24
Tattoos Picture Page 25
Tattoos Picture Page 26
Tattoos Picture Page 27
Tattoos Picture Page 28
Tattoos Picture Page 29
Tattoos Picture Page 30
Tattoos Picture Page 31
Tattoos Picture Page 32
Tattoos Picture Page 33
Tattoos Picture Page 34
Tattoos Picture Page 35
Tattoos Picture Page 36
Tattoos Picture Page 37
Tattoos Picture Page 38
Tattoos Picture Page 39
Tattoos Picture Page 40
Tattoos Picture Page 41
Tattoos Picture Page 42
Tattoos Picture Page 43
Tattoos Picture Page 44
Tattoos Picture Page 45
Tattoos Picture Page 46
Tattoos Picture Page 47
Tattoos Picture Page 48
Tattoos Picture Page 49
Tattoos Picture Page 50
Tattoos Picture Page 51
Tattoos Picture Page 52
Tattoos Picture Page 53
Tattoos Picture Page 54
Tattoos Picture Page 55
Tattoos Picture Page 56
Tattoos Picture Page 57
Tattoos Picture Page 58
Tattoos Picture Page 59
Tattoos Picture Page 60
Tattoos Picture Page 61
Tattoos Picture Page 62
Tattoos Picture Page 63
Tattoos Picture Page 64
Tattoos Picture Page 65
Tattoos Picture Page 66
Tattoos Picture Page 67
Tattoos Picture Page 68
Tattoos Picture Page 69
Tattoos Picture Page 70
Tattoos Picture Page 71
Tattoos Picture Page 72
Tattoos Picture Page 73
Tattoos Picture Page 74
Tattoos Picture Page 75
Tattoos Picture Page 76
Tattoos Picture Page 77
Tattoos Picture Page 78
Tattoos Picture Page 79
Tattoos Picture Page 80
Tattoos Picture Page 81
Tattoos Picture Page 82
Tattoos Picture Page 83
Tattoos Picture Page 84
Tattoos Picture Page 85
Tattoos Picture Page 86
Tattoos Picture Page 87
Tattoos Picture Page 88
Tattoos Picture Page 89
Tattoos Picture Page 90
Tattoos Picture Page 91
Tattoos Picture Page 92
Tattoos Picture Page 93
Tattoos Picture Page 94
Tattoos Picture Page 95
Tattoos Picture Page 96
Tattoos Picture Page 97
Tattoos Picture Page 98
Tattoos Picture Page 99
Tattoos Picture Page 100
Tattoos Picture Page 101
Tattoos Picture Page 102
Tattoos Picture Page 103
Tattoos Picture Page 104
Tattoos Picture Page 105
Tattoos Picture Page 106
Tattoos Picture Page 107
Tattoos Picture Page 108
Tattoos Picture Page 109
Tattoos Picture Page 110
Tattoos Picture Page 111
Tattoos Picture Page 112
Tattoos Picture Page 113
Tattoos Picture Page 114
Tattoos Picture Page 115
Tattoos Picture Page 116
Tattoos Picture Page 117
Tattoos Picture Page 118
Tattoos Picture Page 119
Tattoos Picture Page 120
Luxury Villa and Home Page 1
Luxury Villa and Home Page 2
Luxury Villa and Home Page 3
Luxury Villa and Home Page 4
Luxury Villa and Home Page 5
Luxury Villa and Home Page 6
Luxury Villa and Home Page 7
Luxury Villa and Home Page 8
Luxury Villa and Home Page 9
Luxury Villa and Home Page 10
Luxury Villa and Home Page 11
Luxury Villa and Home Page 12
Luxury Villa and Home Page 13
Luxury Villa and Home Page 14
Luxury Villa and Home Page 15
Luxury Villa and Home Page 16
Luxury Villa and Home Page 17
Luxury Villa and Home Page 18
Luxury Villa and Home Page 19
Luxury Villa and Home Page 20
Luxury Villa and Home Page 21
Luxury Villa and Home Page 22
Luxury Villa and Home Page 23
Luxury Villa and Home Page 24
Luxury Villa and Home Page 25
Luxury Villa and Home Page 26
Luxury Villa and Home Page 27
Luxury Villa and Home Page 28
Luxury Villa and Home Page 29
Luxury Villa and Home Page 30
Luxury Villa and Home Page 31
Luxury Villa and Home Page 32
Luxury Villa and Home Page 33
Luxury Villa and Home Page 34
Luxury Villa and Home Page 35
Luxury Villa and Home Page 36
Luxury Villa and Home Page 37
Luxury Villa and Home Page 38
Luxury Villa and Home Page 39
Luxury Villa and Home Page 40
Luxury Villa and Home Page 41
Luxury Villa and Home Page 42
Luxury Villa and Home Page 43
Luxury Villa and Home Page 44
Luxury Villa and Home Page 45
Luxury Villa and Home Page 46
Luxury Villa and Home Page 47
Luxury Villa and Home Page 48
Luxury Villa and Home Page 49
Luxury Villa and Home Page 50
Luxury Villa and Home Page 51
Luxury Villa and Home Page 52
Luxury Villa and Home Page 53
Luxury Villa and Home Page 54
Luxury Villa and Home Page 55
Luxury Villa and Home Page 56
Luxury Villa and Home Page 57
Luxury Villa and Home Page 58
Luxury Villa and Home Page 59
Luxury Villa and Home Page 60
Luxury Villa and Home Page 61
Luxury Villa and Home Page 62
Luxury Villa and Home Page 63
Luxury Villa and Home Page 64
Luxury Villa and Home Page 65
Luxury Villa and Home Page 66
Luxury Villa and Home Page 67
Luxury Villa and Home Page 68
Luxury Villa and Home Page 69
Luxury Villa and Home Page 70
Luxury Villa and Home Page 71
Luxury Villa and Home Page 72
Luxury Villa and Home Page 73
Luxury Villa and Home Page 74
Luxury Villa and Home Page 75
Luxury Villa and Home Page 76
Luxury Villa and Home Page 77
Luxury Villa and Home Page 78
Luxury Villa and Home Page 79
Luxury Villa and Home Page 80
Luxury Villa and Home Page 81
Luxury Villa and Home Page 82
Luxury Villa and Home Page 83
Luxury Villa and Home Page 84
Luxury Villa and Home Page 85
Luxury Villa and Home Page 86
Luxury Villa and Home Page 87
Luxury Villa and Home Page 88
Luxury Villa and Home Page 89
Luxury Villa and Home Page 90
Luxury Villa and Home Page 91
Luxury Villa and Home Page 92
Luxury Villa and Home Page 93
Luxury Villa and Home Page 94
Luxury Villa and Home Page 95
Luxury Villa and Home Page 96
Luxury Villa and Home Page 97
Luxury Villa and Home Page 98
Luxury Villa and Home Page 99
Famous People Page 1
Famous People Page 2
Famous People Page 3
Famous People Page 4
Famous People Page 5
Famous People Page 6
Famous People Page 7
Famous People Page 8
Famous People Page 9
Famous People Page 10
Famous People Page 11
Famous People Page 12
Famous People Page 13
Famous People Page 14
Famous People Page 15
Famous People Page 16
Famous People Page 17
Famous People Page 18
Famous People Page 19
Famous People Page 20
Famous People Page 21
Famous People Page 22
Famous People Page 23
Famous People Page 24
Famous People Page 25
Famous People Page 26
Famous People Page 27
Famous People Page 28
Famous People Page 29
Famous People Page 30
Famous People Page 31
Famous People Page 32
Famous People Page 33
Famous People Page 34
Famous People Page 35
Famous People Page 36
Famous People Page 37
Famous People Page 38
Famous People Page 39
Famous People Page 40
Famous People Page 41
Famous People Page 42
Famous People Page 43
Famous People Page 44
Famous People Page 45
Famous People Page 46
Famous People Page 47
Famous People Page 48
Famous People Page 49
Famous People Page 50
Famous People Page 51
Famous People Page 52
Famous People Page 53
Famous People Page 54
Famous People Page 55
Famous People Page 56
Famous People Page 57
Famous People Page 58
Famous People Page 59
Famous People Page 60
Famous People Page 61
Famous People Page 62
Famous People Page 63
Famous People Page 64
Famous People Page 65
Famous People Page 66
Famous People Page 67
Famous People Page 68
Famous People Page 69
Famous People Page 70
Famous People Page 71
Famous People Page 72
Famous People Page 73
Famous People Page 74
Famous People Page 75
Famous People Page 76
Famous People Page 77
Famous People Page 78
Famous People Page 79
Famous People Page 80
Famous People Page 81
Famous People Page 82
Famous People Page 83
Famous People Page 84
Famous People Page 85
Famous People Page 86
Famous People Page 87
Famous People Page 88
Famous People Page 89
Famous People Page 90
Famous People Page 91
Famous People Page 92
Famous People Page 93
Famous People Page 94
Famous People Page 95
Famous People Page 96
Famous People Page 97
Famous People Page 98
Famous People Page 99
Famous People Page 100
Famous People Page 101
Famous People Page 102
Famous People Page 103
Famous People Page 104
Famous People Page 105
Famous People Page 106
Famous People Page 107
Famous People Page 108
Famous People Page 109
Famous People Page 110
Famous People Page 111
Famous People Page 112
Famous People Page 113
Famous People Page 114
Famous People Page 115
Famous People Page 116
Famous People Page 117
Famous People Page 118
Famous People Page 119
Famous People Page 120
0 Response to 'Reconfiguring Romanticism (46): Michael Palmer on “Robert Duncan and Romantic Synthesis”'
Post a Comment