Robert Duncan @90
Robert Duncan, American poet (1919 – 1988)
Robert Duncan (January 7, 1919 – February 3, 1988) was an American poet and a student of H.D. and the Western esoteric tradition who spent most of his career in and around San Francisco. Though associated with any number of literary traditions and schools, Duncan is often identified with the New American Poetry and Black Mountain poets. Duncan’s mature work emerged in the 1950s from within the literary context of Beat culture and today he is also identified as a key figure in the San Francisco Renaissance.
Robert Duncan also translated Nerval’s Les Chimères, famous for being referenced by Eliot‘s Waste Land. I am very much fascinated these days by poetry and the translation of poetry.
When I first heard about Black Mountain College is was because of Cage and Cunningham. After hearing about it, I went online to see if I couldn’t apply to study there. Oh well.
I never read anything by Robert Duncan but I am fond of San Francisco, its culture, freedom and literary past.
I’ve been there a couple of months ago and of course I visited the City Lights Bookstore in the North Beach district, where I could see many young people reading books here and there and an atmosphere I liked a lot. Don’t know if this place is now a ghost of the past like ‘Il caffè greco’ in Rome. Probably not, the fifties being much closer.
I studied English at school, but my knowledge of it greatly improved when, at 18, I met some people from SF in one of the hearts of Rome, Trastevere. These American people deeply influenced me. As I wrote in a post on California, on the stage of this ancient theatre I first met young America and its sparkling fresh mind.
hey Roma man,
Thanks for the caffé Greco link. I like cafe history:
The Antico Caffè Greco (sometimes simply referred to as Caffè Greco) is a historic landmark café which opened in 1760 on 84, Via dei Condotti in Rome, Italy. It is perhaps the best known and oldest caffè in Rome and within Italy only Caffè Florian in Venice (established in 1720) may be older.
Historic figures including Stendhal, Goethe, Byron, Franz Liszt, Keats, and Felix Mendelssohn have had coffee there . Today it remains a haven for writers, politicians, artists and notable people in Rome.
Today it remains a haven for writers, politicians, artists and notable people in Rome.
Well, sometimes, but only for its fame. I don’t think it is a centre of cultural life any more, though I might be wrong, it is ages I don’t go there.
You seem to know many things about my country and some posts of yours are about Italian stuff. Any particular reason?
Any particular reason?
European culture in general, regional differences, cross-cultural influences, etc… is what interests me. Underappreciated areas of historiography.
Jan