Robert Duncan (1919–1988) was a foremost figure in the San Francisco Renaissance and is considered one of the most accomplished and influential postwar American poets. He became a leading practitioner of nontraditional open form poetry, his later work shaped by ideas associated with Charles Olson and the Black Mountain School of poetry. During his lifetime, he published more than a dozen collections of poems, including those in this volume, which remain his best-known works.Peter Quartermain taught contemporary poetry and poetics at the University of British Columbia for over thirty years. He is the author of Basil Bunting, Poet of the North; Disjunctive Poetics: From Gertrude Stein and Louis Zukofsky to Susan Howe; and Stubborn Poetries: Poetic Facticity and the Avant-Garde. He is the editor of Robert Duncan’s Collected Early Poems and Plays (UC Press).

• PrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Discovery MakingThe Opening of the Field (1960)Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow -The Dance The Law I Love Is Major Mover The Structure of Rime I The Structure of Rime II A Poem Slow Beginning The Structure of Rime III The Structure of Rime IV The Structure of Rime V The Structure of Rime VI The Structure of Rime VII Three Pages from a Birthday Book This Place Rumord to Have Been Sodom The Ballad of the Enamord Mage The Ballad of Mrs Noah The Maiden The Propositions Four Pictures of the Real Universe Evocation Of Blasphemy Nor Is the Past PureCrosses of Harmony and Disharmony A Poem of Despondencies Poetry, a Natural Thing Keeping the Rhyme A Song of the Old Order The Question The Performance We Wait For At Christmas Proofs Yes, as a Look Springs to Its Face Yes, as a Look Springs to Its Face, A Poem Beginning with a Line by Pindar The Structure of Rime VIII The Structure of Rime IX The Structure of Rime X The Structure of Rime XI A Storm of White Atlantis Out of the Black Bone Dance Under Ground The Natural Doctrine The Structure of Rime XII The Structure of Rime XIII Another Animadversion After Reading Barely and Widely Ingmar Bergman’s Seventh Seal Food for Fire, Food for ThoughtUncollected Work 1957–1960A Stray Poem (Notes Reading from Rene Fulop-Miller’s The Power and Secrets of the Jesuits)Melville after PierreSolitudeThe Song of the River to Its ShoresPre-faceI Saw the Rabbit LeapRoots and Branches (1964)Roots and BranchesRoots and BranchesWhat Do I Know of the Old Lore?Night ScenesA Sequence of Poems for H.D.’s BirthdayA LetterNel Mezzo del Cammin di Nostra VitaA Dancing Concerning a Form of WomenThe LawApprehensionsSonneries of the Rose CrossNow the Record Now RecordVariations on Two Dicta of William BlakeCover ImagesCome, Let Me Free MyselfRiskFour Songs the Night Nurse SangStructure of Rime XVStructure of Rime XVIStructure of Rime XVIIStructure of Rime XVIIIOsiris and SetWindingsTwo PresentationsAfter a Passage in BaudelaireShelley’s Arethusa Set to New MeasuresAfter Reading H.D.’s Hermetic DefinitionsStrains of SightDovesReturning to the Rhetoric of an Early ModeTwo EntertainmentsThe Ballad of the Forfar Witches’ SingA Country Wife’s Song What Happened : PreludeA Set of Romantic HymnsThank You for LoveFrom The MabinogionForced LinesA New Poem (for Jack Spicer)Sonnet 1Sonnet 2Sonnet 3AnsweringAdam’s Way: A Play upon Theosophical ThemesCyparissusA Part-Sequence for ChangeStructure of Rime XIXStructure of Rime XXStructure of Rime XXIThe ContinentUncollected Work 1961–1964A Play with MasksWeaving the DesignOld TestamentNew TestamentBending the Bow (1968)Introduction Sonnet 4 Structure of Rime XXII5th Sonnet Such Is the Sickness of Many a Good Thing Bending the Bow Tribal Memories Passages 1At the Loom Passages 2What I Saw Passages 3Where It Appears Passages 4The Moon Passages 5The Collage Passages 6Envoy Passages 7Structure of Rime XXIII As in the Old Days Passages 8The Architecture Passages 9These Past Years Passages 10Shadows Passages 11Wine Passages 12Structure of Rime XXIV Structure of Rime XXV ReflectionsThe Fire Passages 13Chords Passages 14Spelling Passages 15A Lammas Tiding My Mother Would Be a Falconress Saint Graal (after Verlaine) Parsifal (after Wagner and Verlaine)The Currents Passages 16Moving the Moving Image Passages 17The Torso Passages 18The Earth Passages 19Structure of Rime XXVI: For Kenneth Anger An Illustration Passages 20The Multiversity Passages 21In the Place of a Passage 22 Benefice Passages 23Orders Passages 24Up Rising Passages 25The Chimeras of Gérard de Nerval El Desdichado (The Disinherited)Myrtho HorusAnterosDelphica Artemis The Christ in the Olive Grove Golden Lines Earth’s Winter Song Moira’s Cathedral A Shrine to Ameinias Narrative Bridges for Adam’s Way The Soldiers Passages 26An Interlude Transgressing the Real Passages 27The Light Passages 28Eye of God Passages 29Stage Directions Passages 30God-Spell Epilogos Uncollected Work 1965–1968At the Poetry Conference: Berkeley after the New York StyleWe heard it as a cry. It was the Word.Keeping the War InsideYes I care deeply and yetChristmas Present, Christmas Presence!From a Poem by John AshberyIf I Had KinGround Work: Before the War (1984)Some Notes on NotationAchilles’ Song Ancient Questions A Song from the Structures of Rime Ringing as the Poet Paul Celan SingsDespair in Being Tedious The Concert Passages 31 (Tribunals) Ancient Reveries and Declamations Passages 32 (Tribunals) Transmissions Passages 33 (Tribunals) The Feast Passages 34 (Tribunals) Before the Judgment Passages 35 (Tribunals) Santa Cruz Propositions A Glimpse And If He Had Been Wrong for Me For Me Too, I, Long Ago Shipping Out with the CantosAnd Hell Is the Realm of God’s Self-Loathing Childhood’s Retreat Fragments of an Albigensian Rime O! Passages 37Bring It Up from the Dark Structure of Rime XXVII Structure of Rime XXVIII: In Memoriam Wallace StevensOver ThereThe Museum Interrupted FormsPoems from the Margins of Thom Gunn’s Moly Preface to the Suite The Moly Suite Near Circe’s House Rites of Passage: I MolyRites of Passage: II A Seventeenth Century Suite in Homage to the Metaphysical Genius in English Poetry (1590–1690) 1. Love’s a great courtesy to be declared2. Sir Walter Ralegh, What Is Our Life? 3. Go as in a dream 4. Robert Southwell, the Burning Babe5. “A pretty Babe”—that burning Babe 6. George Herbert, Jordan (I) 7. George Herbert, Jordan (II)8. These Lines Composing Themselves in My Head as I Awoke Early This Morning, It Being Still Dark, December 16, 1971  Passages 369. Ben Jonson, Hymenæi: Or the Solemnities of Masque, and Barriers 10. John Norris of Bemerton, Hymne to Darkness Coda  Dante ÉtudesPrefaceBook One We Will Endeavor Secondary Is the Grammar A Little Language To Speak My Mind Everything Speaks to Me In the Way of a Question Speech Directed Enricht in the Increment The Individual Man Of Empire The Meaning of Each Particular The Whole Potentiality The Work The Household Let Him First Drink of the Fountain And Tho They Have No Vowel Letting the Beat Go Book Two A Hard Task in Truth Lovely  The One Rule Our Art but to Articulate In Nothing Superior Enacted On Obedience Zealous Liberality We Convivial in What Is Ours! Mr. Philip Wicksteed Stumbling into Rime in Prose in Translating Dante’s Convivio Go, My Songs, Even as You Came to Me Book Three My Soul Was as If Free Nor Dream in Your Hearts For the Sea Is God’s Where the Fox of This Stench Sulks In Truth Doth She Breathe Out Poisonous Fumes Then Many a One Sang In My Youth Not Unstaind And a Wisdom as Such Four Supplementary Études Of Memory HersI Too Trembling But We, to Whom the World Is The Missionaries PassagesThe Torn Cloth Songs of an Other Empedoklean Reveries PassagesJamais PassagesAn Interlude of Winter Light “Eidolon of the Aion” The Presence of the Dance{ths}/{ths}The Resolution of the Music Circulations of the Song Uncollected Work 1969–1982 O tree of lights! tree of colorsChildlessAfter Shakespeare’s Sonnet 76Second Take on Shakespeare’s Sonnet 76SheSomething Is MovingA Fantasy Piece for Helen AdamFeb. 22, 1973I have{ths}/{ths}nothing to go onA Prepucal Face for Nigel RobertsJohnny’s ThingAn EpithalamiumPoe et CieLet Me Join You Again This Morning, Walt WhitmanGround Work II: In the Dark (1987)An Alternate Life In the South Homecoming Supplication The Quotidian To Master BaudelaireToward His Malaise Among His Words The Face At Cambridge an Address to Young Poets Native to the Land of My MothertongueLe Sonnet Où Sonne la Sonnette dès Dernières Jours Toujours Fait Son RetourPour Souffrir l’Envie Jusqu’à l’Amour en Vie Sets of Syllables, Sets of Words, Sets of Lines, Sets of Poems Addressing: Veil, Turbine, Cord, & Bird Preliminary ExerciseNotes during a Lecture on MathematicsThe Recall of the Star MiraflorThe Naming of the Time Ever I Pour Forth My Life from This Bough The Turbine What the Sonnet Means the Sonnet Means For the Assignment of the Spirit The Cherubim (I) The Cherubim (II) Styx The Sentinels An Eros/Amor/Love Cycle Et PassagesIn Wonder PassagesConstructing the Course of a River in the Pyrenees In Waking From the Fall of 1950, December 1980 Two Sets of Tens: Derived from Confucian Analects Regulators Set of PassagesThe Dignities PassagesThe First PassagesStimmung PassagesEnthralld PassagesQuand le Grand Foyer Descend dans les Eaux PassagesIn Blood’s Domaine PassagesAfter Passage PassagesWith In PassagesSeams PassagesYou, Muses PassagesStructure of Rime: Of the Five SongsThe Five Songs Whose PassagesClose At the Door Illustrative Lines After a Long Illness Uncollected Work 1983–1988 In PassageHekatombé Appendix: Table of Contents for Roots and BranchesNotesSelected BibliographyIndex of Titles and First Lines

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