Robert Duncan

James Maynard (Buffalo State, SUNY)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

Born 7 Jan 1919
Died 3 Feb 1988
Activity 1939-1988

Places

Born in United States
Active in United States

Activities

Primary

Playwright / Dramatist
Poet

Resources

Duncan's Works

Save to Bookshelf

Having dedicated himself at a young age to a life of poetry, Robert Duncan had a long, active, and influential writing career lasting from the late 1930s to the time of his death in 1988. Equally committed to poetry's traditional sources as well as to the ongoing expansion of open forms and progressive politics, he was one of the most radical poets of the past century in almost every sense of the word. Cosmological in his understanding of poetry, he took language to be integral to the overlapping scales of both the universe and the self as they emerge out of process and multiplicity. Defending heterodoxy against institutional authority and dogma, Duncan often criticized various aesthetic as well as social conventions, and his poetics directly corresponds with his philosophical, political,…

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2127 words

Citation: Maynard, James. "Robert Duncan". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 06 October 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1348, accessed 25 November 2024.]