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This
must be Robert Duncan’s year. A volume of interviews has come out with North
Atlantic Books and the first volume of the Collected
Poems is to appear before the end of the year. Meanwhile I’ve just finished
reading Lisa Jarnot’s biography (University of California). It’s a very good
book, up there with the Killian/Ellingham biography of Jack Spicer, though not
entirely without fault. There’s much detail on Duncan’s Bay Area heritage while
his connection with Black Mountain College is less clearly discussed. Certainly
his relationships with Robert Creeley and Charles Olson are detailed but you sense
that the College itself isn’t deemed so important. Duncan’s poetic was mostly
formed by the time Olson took over at Black Mountain (and his relationship with
the older poet was not always an easy one). After the publication of Donald
Allen’s The New American Poetry
Duncan’s life became increasingly more hectic as he made appearances and taught
for longer periods at numerous American institutions. These travels and his
longer ones to Europe and Australia are recorded here at times somewhat
breathlessly though there are still omissions here and there. Duncan’s
friendships were varied and crossed boundaries. He got along very well with
Elizabeth Bishop, for instance, though they didn’t dwell on each other’s
writings or poetics. There is some detail on Duncan’s visit to Australia in the
mid-seventies though it mostly focusses on the Sydney connection (Robert
Adamson and Chris Edwards in particular). I met him briefly myself in Melbourne
at Bernie O’Regan’s house with a group of poets including Kris Hemensley and
Walter Billeter. We all read from our work, Duncan characteristically conducting
his own reading with waving arm. He was most taken with the work of Walter Billeter,
a writer of Swiss/German background living in Australia and working as a poet
and translator (Breath Crystal, his
version of Celan, published by Robert Kenny’s Rigmarole Press, is very good).
Not long after this Billeter stopped writing and disappeared from the scene.
From the top: Katherine Gallagher at King's College, London; Lisa Samuels and Robert Saxton at Swedenborg Hall; Lee Harwood and Maurice Scully at The Lamb.
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