The Opening of the Field Poetry

by Duncan, Robert

• ISBN13: 9780811204804
• ISBN10: 0811204804
• Edition: 00
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1973-01-17
• Publisher: New Directions

Summary

Speaking of his own work, Robert Duncan (1919-1987) said: "I make poetry as other men make war or make love or make states or revolutions: to exercise my faculties at large." The Opening of the Field, his first major collection, was originally brought out in 1960; in it, Duncan introduced his "Structures of Rime," the open series he continued in his subsequent collections, Roots and Branches (1964) and Bending the Bow (1968), Ground Work: Before the War (1983), and Ground Work II: In the Dark (1987). "Structures of Rime" affirms his belief in the universal integrity of the poem itself in the living process of language. Thus in "The Structure of Rime I" he declares: "O Lasting Sentence, / sentence after sentence I make in your image. In the feet that measure the dance of my pages I hear cosmic intoxications of the man I will be."

Table of Contents

Often I Am Permitted To Return To A Meadow	7	(1)
The Dance	8	(2)
The Law I Love Is Major Mover	10	(2)
The Structure of Rime I	12	(1)
The Structure of Rime II	13	(1)
A Poem Slow Beginning	14	(2)
The Structure of Rime III	16	(1)
The Structure of Rime IV	17	(1)
The Structure of Rime V	18	(1)
The Structure of Rime VI	19	(1)
The Structure of Rime VII	20	(1)
Three Pages from a Birthday Book	21	(1)
This Place Rumord To Have Been Sodom	22	(1)
The Ballad of the Enamord Mage	23	(1)
The Ballad of Mrs Noah	24	(3)
The Maiden	27	(3)
(The Propositions)	30	(8)
Four Pictures of the Real Universe	38	(2)
Evocation	40	(1)
Of Blasphemy	41	(1)
Nor Is the Past Pure	41	(3)
Crosses of Harmony and Disharmony	44	(4)
A Poem of Despondencies	48	(2)
Poetry, A Natural Thing	50	(1)
Keeping The Rhyme	51	(1)
A Song of the Old Order	52	(2)
The Question	54	(1)
The Performance We Wait For	55	(3)
At Christmas	58	(1)
Proofs	59	(1)
Yes, As A Look Springs To Its Face	60	(1)
Yes, As A Look Springs To Its Face	61	(1)
A Poem Beginning With A Line By Pindar	62	(8)
The Structure of Rime VIII	70	(1)
The Structure of Rime IX	71	(1)
The Structure of Rime X	72	(1)
The Structure of Rime XI	73	(1)
A Storm of White	74	(1)
Atlantis	75	(1)
Out Of The Black	76	(1)
Bone Dance	77	(2)
Under Ground	79	(2)
The Natural Doctrine	81	(1)
The Structure of Rime XII	82	(1)
The Structure of Rime XIII	83	(1)
Another Animadversion	84	(1)
The Inbinding	85	(1)
Mirrors	86	(1)
A Process	86	(1)
Returning to Roots of First Feeling	87	(1)
After Reading BARELY AND WIDELY	88	(5)
Ingmar Bergman's SEVENTH SEAL	93	(2)
Food For Fire, Food For Thought	95