Robert Duncan
1919–1988 · American poet of the San Francisco Renaissance
Robert Duncan (Oakland, 1919 – 1988) was an American poet associated with the New American Poetry, Black Mountain College and the San Francisco Renaissance. His importance lies in his poetry: this record does not document any painting practice of his, so his career is considered here through his writing.
He was born in Oakland, but in 1920 he was adopted by Edwin and Minnehaha Symmes, a family of devout Theosophists who renamed him Robert Edward Symmes. After his adoptive father died in 1936 he studied at the University of California, Berkeley, where he moved among leftist bohemian circles. In 1938 he spent a brief period at Black Mountain College. His first book, Heavenly City Earthly City, appeared in 1947. In the 1960s he gained considerable recognition with The Opening of the Field (1960), Bending the Bow (1968) and Roots and Branches, generally regarded as his most significant works.
His poetry mixes modernist traits, such as a preference for the impersonal, the mythic and the hieratic, with a Romantic sense of the organic and the irrational. He saw himself as heir to Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams and D. H. Lawrence, and he was a devotee of H.D. After Bending the Bow he vowed not to publish a new collection for fifteen years. Ground Work I: Before the War appeared in 1984 and won the National Poetry Award, and Ground Work II: In the Dark followed in February 1988, the month of his death.
His personal life is also part of his story. In 1944 he published the essay "The Homosexual in Society", which compared the situation of homosexuals with that of African Americans and Jews. From 1951 he shared his life with the artist Jess Collins until Duncan's death.
His legacy was consolidated by the collected writings published by the University of California Press from 2011, and his influence can be seen in both mainstream and avant-garde writing.