Robert Duncan (1919-1988) was one of the major writers in the San Francisco Renaissance movement and is considered one of the most accomplished and influential of the postwar American poets. A foremost figure among the New American and Black Mountain poets, Duncan, following the death of Charles Olson, became the leading practitioner of a nontraditional open form poetry. He is the author of The Opening of the Field, Roots and Branches, and Bending the Bow, among other works. James Maynard is Associate Curator of the Poetry Collection, University at Buffalo, and has written extensively on the work of Robert Duncan. His other editorial projects include a new edition of Duncan’s Ground Work: Before the War/In the Dark and (Re:)Working the Ground: Essays on the Late Writings of Robert Duncan.

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionPart I: 1940s1. An Embryo for God: Tropic of Capricorn2. The Homosexual in Society3. What to Do Now4. Reviewing View, an Attack5. Poetics of Music: Stravinsky6. The Poet and Poetry—A SymposiumPart II: 1950s7. Pages from a Notebook8. From a Notebook9. Notes on Poetics regarding Olson’s MaximusPart III: 1960s10. Properties and Our REAL Estate11. Ideas of the Meaning of Form12. After For Love13. Preface: Helen Adam, Ballads14. Poetry before Language15. The Lasting Contribution of Ezra Pound16. The Sweetness and Greatness of Dante’s Divine Comedy17. Introduction: William Everson, Single Source18. Towards an Open Universe19. The Truth and Life of Myth: An Essay in Essential Autobiography20. A Critical Difference of View21. Man’s Fulfillment in Order and Strife22. Jack Spicer, Poet: 1925–1965Part IV: 1970s23. Changing Perspectives in Reading Whitman24. Notes on Grossinger’s Solar Journal: Oecological Sections25. Iconographical Extensions26. Of George Herms, His Hermes, and His Hermetic Art27. From Notes on the Structure of Rime28. Preface to a Reading of Passages 1–2229. Kopóltuš30. Introduction: Allen Upward, The Divine Mystery31. An Art of Wondering32. A Reading of Thirty Things33. As Testimony: Reading Zukofsky These Forty Years34. Wallace Berman: The Fashioning Spirit35. In Introduction: John Taggart, DodekaPart V: 1980s36. Preface: Jack Spicer, One Night Stand & Other Poems37. The Adventure of Whitman’s Line38. The Self in Postmodern Poetry39. Statement on Jacobus for Borregaard’s Museum40. Afterword: Beverly Dahlen, The Egyptian Poems41. The Delirium of MeaningAppendix: List of Uncollected Essays and Other ProseNotesWorks Cited in the EssaysAcknowledgments of PermissionsIndex

"Includes some of Duncan's greatest essays . . . a great help to all readers."