Robert Duncan And Denise Levertov

by Gelpi, Albert

• ISBN13: 9780804751315
• ISBN10: 0804751315
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-10-25
• Publisher: Stanford Univ Pr

Summary

This collection of essays, written for this volume and often using unpublished and archival materials, converges around the usually close and intense relationship between Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov, two of the most important and remarkable American poets in the second half of the twentieth century. Their association, played out in their poems and in an extraordinary exchange of letters, was based on a sense of the visionary imagination informing the direction and shape of the poet. However, they had a falling out during the Vietnam crisis over the relationship between poetry and politics, between the private and public responsibilities of the poet. Such issues are vital not only to their poetry and the poetry of that period but to contemporary poetry as well. A distinguished group of critics, led by Albert Gelpi and Robert J. Bertholf, examines the issues that drew Levertov and Duncan together, and split them apart, in a book that has the openness and coherence of an urgent, contemporary dialogue about the form and meaning of poetry.

Author Biography

Albert Gelpi is William Robertson Coe Professor of American Literature, Emeritus, at Stanford University. Robert J. Bertholf is Charles D. Abbott Scholar of Poetry and the Arts in The Poetry Collection, University Libraries, State University of New York at Buffalo. Together, Gelpi and Bertholf are the editors of The Letters of Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov (Stanford University Press, 2004).

Table of Contents

Preface	p. vii
List of Abbreviations	p. xiii
Decision at the Apogee: Robert Duncan's Anarchist Critique of Denise Levertov	p. 1
Robert Duncan and the Question of Law: Ernst Kantorowicz and the Poet's Two Bodies	p. 18
Better to Stumble to It: The Start of Duncan's Letters: Poems, 1953-1956	p. 32
Visions of the Field in Poetry and Painting: Denise Levertov, Robert Duncan, and John Button	p. 43
My Stories with Robert Duncan	p. 63
The People's P***k: A Dialectical Tale	p. 71
The Hasid and the Kabbalist	p. 81
Chelsea 8: Political Poetry at Midcentury	p. 93
Poetic Authority and the Public Sphere of Politics in the Activist 1960s: The Duncan-Levertov Debate	p. 109
Prophetic Frustrations: Robert Duncan's Tribunals	p. 126
Revolution or Death: Levertov's Poetry in Time of War	p. 148
The Vision of the Burning Babe: Southwell, Levertov, and Duncan	p. 161
Poetic Language and Language Poetry: Levertov, Duncan, Creeley	p. 180
List of Contributors	p. 199
Index	p. 203
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