{"id":8250,"date":"2012-05-03T13:33:04","date_gmt":"2012-05-03T17:33:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=8250"},"modified":"2012-05-03T13:36:01","modified_gmt":"2012-05-03T17:36:01","slug":"robert-duncan-to-kenneth-irby-may-10-1963","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/robert-duncan-to-kenneth-irby-may-10-1963\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Duncan to Kenneth Irby, May 10, 1963"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Last year as he & his work were being celebrated at the University of Lawrence, Kansas [see post here<\/a>] Ken Irby \u00a0gave me a copy of &\u00a0permission to reprint the following letter by Robert Duncan \u00a0\u2014 the first one Irby received from RD. It took awhile, but here it is finally, as photo repro & in a transcription. (The few words that were unreadable are in bold with a question mark after them).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

May 10, 1963<\/p>\n

Dear Kenneth Irby, \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0No, I don\u2019t mind your writing to me, and it\u2019s got be \u201cout of the blue\u201d at some point. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Ron Loewinsohn had calld\u00a0 my attention to your poem in change when he brought me my copy, and I like then immediately how solid (vs. fluid) words and sentences, in the movement of the poem the rise, are for you. By contrast to my own rhetorical river-of-sound nature that has to exert some vigorous art to give substance to the immediate area of the poem. And now that I read these two poems (the one you sent me with the letter) the land, Kansas, and plain begin to be a language \u2014 you\u2019ve not really to win your way thru to writing at all (as I had some six years of writing poetry all wrong, before in 1942 some glimmer of a natural voice appeard \u2014 and then another four before, with Medieval Scenes, I began to have a poetic, an idea of what had to be done, and another two years (the Venice Poem) before I could do what I knew had to be done.)<\/p>\n

All your questions \u2014 of starting the poem; of where does the poem work beyond us, beyond its own; \u2014 but then you see that even as you ask me \u2014 are urgencies of a poetic forming in you. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I can tell you at least of my own experience that these questions will never be done. I am dependent upon the poem itself and must follow it like a trail thru a jungle that exists (the trail) only in the immediate stop [?]<\/strong> on takes \u2014 all other appearances of trail, far ahead or just behind the explorer (who must after all map the territory as he goes, in order to go), all other sights of the way being false to the country.<\/p>\n

Every mastery and obedience in the poem, the way we respect the syllable, the word \u2014 demand every feat of it \u2014 the firmness with which we intend our formal feeling \u2014 of outline, of mass, of phase, of parts belonging [?]<\/strong> to a whole \u2014 does work beyond us and the poem. For we and the poem too have been workd in our effort. I mean here just in the sense that every act works \u201cbeyond\u201d \u2014 of any man. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Ignorance, affectation, \u201cweakness\u201d, stupidity, inelegance \u2014 work as major powers in, thru, and beyond. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cTigers\u201d I was going to say- but now I have on my mind the shoreline, where sea, wind, plants and the land work a form \u2014 is it content? It\u2019s not an outline. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Of what? of sea? of land? For it\u2019s an area of communication.<\/p>\n

As in your grasslands you are searching rightly for what a poem is to be in another \u201cpoem\u201d \u2014 the winds, the grass, the plains will tell you (makers of a horizon you\u2019ve known, I\u2019ve only seen idly in passing) what I can\u2019t about beginning and end of \u201cform\u201d \u2014<\/p>\n

And what is exhilerating is that in two poems I can begin to see, because you\u2019ve gone to these presences, terms [?]<\/strong> of far-reaching and back-yard that I hadn\u2019t seen before. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Even, because the poems do take hold, do live thru your living.<\/p>\n

The passage about Medieval Scenes that you saw must have been the paragraph ueming [?]<\/strong> quotes in his catalogus from an autobiographical essay I wrote to accompany the ms of the scenes when I sold them. And excerpted, it is misleading. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I do more assigned myself the idea of the poem than you assignd yourself the grasslands. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0But I did dare\u00a0 \u2014 myself?, the demon of the poem? \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0That there would be a scene each session. As at times I have prayd for and received dreams. That I would recognize and take my faith in what came in the poem. \u201cMedieval\u201d\u2014 on the one hand, because at that time in Berkeley the group of friends (who appear in the poem) were on the brink of the medieval world \u2014 eventually I was to return to the university after ten years as a student if medieval history \u2014 for there was a great historian there at that time Ernst Kantorowicz \u2013 who in turn had been a young acolyte of the poetic circle of George.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, I was able to receive \u201cmedieval\u201d scenes because I had to imagine them. I had only the knowledge of the medieval that was in my surroundings.<\/p>\n

Yet \u201cmedieval\u201d by some instinct for home too, as your grasslands are to you \u2014 however actual they were \u2014 imaginary. As the demand your imagination to be satistied. I still am aroused by the medieval \u2014 by the actual documents I\u2019ve come to know in study, but also by the romance and fairy tale that I\u2019ve known since earliest childhood. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As \u201cAfrica\u201d is another realm that I come alive to. And the sea-shore.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve tried to \u201cget\u201d San Francisco, the city \u2014 and I\u2019ve no sense of it (as I have no sense or feeling for political ideals in the poem) \u2014 so: there are areas of our thought and feeling the poet doesn\u2019t take hold in.<\/p>\n

Thinking of your plans to leave Harvard \u2014 if you could manage it \u2014 Robert Creeley, Charles Olson, Denise Levertov, Ginsberg \u2014 a Canadian Poetess Margaret Avison \u2014 and I are all going to be reading, lecturing, conferring etc. in a Simmer Session course at the university of British Columbia at Vancouver July 24th \u2014 August 16th, eleven class-meetings 8-10 pm Fee $12.00 It will be a period too tho of many other discussions, for it will be the first time any three of us have been together at the same time same place. And we are all eager for the exchange. for information and enrollment the catalog says apply to: Creative Writing Workshop, Department of University Extension, U. of B.C., Vancouver 8, B.C.<\/p>\n

I would be glad to see more poems if you find time to send them\u2014 yrs.<\/p>\n

Robert Duncan<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last year as he & his work were being celebrated at the University of Lawrence, Kansas [see post here] Ken Irby \u00a0gave me a copy of &\u00a0permission to reprint the following letter by Robert...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[982,830,90],"tags":[458,1103],"class_list":["post-8250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-correspondence","category-poet","category-poetics","tag-kenneth-irby","tag-robert-duncan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8250"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8272,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8250\/revisions\/8272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}