Groundwork
Before the War/In the Dark
Will be published approx. on 8. May 2006
Book
Paperback/Softback
288 pages
978-0-8112-1653-1 (ISBN)
Description
I am speaking now of the Dream in which America sleeps, the New World, moaning, floundering, in three hundred years of invasions, our own history out of Europe and enslaved Africa.Robert Duncan, from Groundwork
Robert Duncan has been widely venerated as one of America's most essential poets: Allen Ginsberg described his poetry as "rapturous wonderings of inspiration," Gwendolyn Brooks called it "a subtle spice," and Susan Howe pointed to Duncan as "my precursor father," Lawrence Ferlinghetti said he "had the finest ear this side of Dante," and Robert Creeley called him "the magister, the singular Master of the Dance."
Now Duncan's magnum opus, Groundwork, is available in one groundbreaking edition. The first volume, Groundwork I: Before the War, was published in 1984, after a fifteen-year publishing silence, and received immediate acclaim: it was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award and won the first National Poetry Award for Duncan's "lifetime devotion to the art of poetry and his grand achievement...." The second volume, Groundwork II: In the Dark, was published in February 1988, the month of Duncan's death. The internationally renowned poet Michael Palmer has written a marvelous introduction for this new edition, where "the singlemindedness of [Duncan's] life's work shows itself in the confident energy of every line" (Voice Literary Supplement).
Robert Duncan has been widely venerated as one of America's most essential poets: Allen Ginsberg described his poetry as "rapturous wonderings of inspiration," Gwendolyn Brooks called it "a subtle spice," and Susan Howe pointed to Duncan as "my precursor father," Lawrence Ferlinghetti said he "had the finest ear this side of Dante," and Robert Creeley called him "the magister, the singular Master of the Dance."
Now Duncan's magnum opus, Groundwork, is available in one groundbreaking edition. The first volume, Groundwork I: Before the War, was published in 1984, after a fifteen-year publishing silence, and received immediate acclaim: it was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award and won the first National Poetry Award for Duncan's "lifetime devotion to the art of poetry and his grand achievement...." The second volume, Groundwork II: In the Dark, was published in February 1988, the month of Duncan's death. The internationally renowned poet Michael Palmer has written a marvelous introduction for this new edition, where "the singlemindedness of [Duncan's] life's work shows itself in the confident energy of every line" (Voice Literary Supplement).
Reviews / Votes
"For Robert Duncan...the poem is a universe in itself, and a soul..." -- Time "Robert Duncan's work has for decades been a recurrent testimony and reminder that poetry had to do with music, with vision, with the live of the soul-not to the exclusion of all else, or indeed of anything, but on the contrary as ground and environing air for whatever the range of experience may be." -- Denise Levertov "Duncan believes in the demiurgic powers of poetry, restoring to it a kind of authority it has not had in a long time...One would have to go back to Dante to find such belief in angels. The angels that Rilke doubted are there for Duncan to converse with." -- Andrei Codrescu - The Baltimore Sun "The poetic tradition that Duncan invokes is necessarily heretical-politically, sexually, and poetically-one which sees 'always under the side turning' in a search for the fullest definition of social order. " -- Michael Davidson - The Los Angeles TimesMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 214 mm
Width: 217 mm
Thickness: 21 mm
Weight
562 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8112-1653-1 (9780811216531)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Robert Duncan (1919-1988) was a 20th century American poet affiliated with the San Francisco Renaissance and Beat movement. Duncan has been widely venerated as a visionary genius of American poetry: Allen Ginsberg described his work as "rapturous wonderings of inspiration"; Gwendolyn Brooks called it "a subtle spice"; Susan Howe pointed to Duncan as "my precursor father"; Lawrence Ferlinghetti said he "had the finest ear this side of Dante"; Marge Piercy speaks of his "deep sense of the history of poetry and of the spoken world"; John Ashbery honored him as "the alchemist of modern poets"; Robert Creeley dubbed him "the magister, the singular Master of the Dance." Michael Palmer was born into an Italian-American family in Manhattan in 1943 and has lived in San Francisco since 1969. He has taught at numerous universities in the United States, Europe and Asia, and has published translations from a variety of languages, in particular French, Brazilian Portuguese and Russian. He has been involved in joint projects with many visual artists and composers in the United States and elsewhere and has also served as an artistic collaborator with the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company for close to fifty years. Palmer's honors include two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writer's Award, a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, the Shelley Memorial Prize from the Poetry Society of America, and he was awarded the 2006 Wallace Stevens Award. In 1999, he was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.