Robert Duncan

Robert Duncan (1919-1988) was born in Oakland, California, and passed away in San Francisco, California. In fact, he spent the majority of his life in California—with some important exceptions during a stint in New York City, integrating into the downtown coterie surrounding Anaïs Nin, and later teaching at Black Mountain College—and played a foundational role in the poetry movement now known as the San Francisco Renaissance, promoting a local poetics. Duncan’s poetry was informed by the occult upbringing he received from his adopted parents. It is also collage-like, often serial in form, and deeply engaged with processual structures of language itself. His 1973 collection The Opening of the Field offers a clear nod in the direction of Charles Olson, a major influence and the subject of his 1961 lecture hosted at Ellen and Warren Tallmans’ basement in Vancouver. Duncan lived openly as a gay man and his landmark essay, “The Homosexual in Society,” preceded by a decade any organized queer rights movement in the U.S.