April 4, 1996-Vol27n24: UB to host national conference focusing on work of revolutionary American poet Robert Duncan

UB to host national conference focusing on work of revolutionary American poet Robert Duncan

By PATRICIA DONOVAN
News Services Staff

ROBERT DUNCAN, the revolutionary post-war American poet who helped pioneer critical new movements in American post-war poetry, will be the subject of a national conference to be held April 18-20 at UB.
The conference, titled "The Opening of the Field," will focus on the poetics that Duncan developed with his life partner, painter/collagist Jess Collins, and the poetic forms, some of the most innovative of the 20th century, that developed from it.
Discussions and lectures will take place in the UB Poetry Collection Reading Room, 420 Capen Hall on the North Campus from 2:30-5 p.m. on Thursday, April 18; 10 a.m.-12:30 p.m. and 2:30-5 p.m. on Friday, April 19, and 10:30 a.m.-1 p.m. on Saturday, April 20.
In addition, evening poetry readings will be held at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Suite 425, 2495 Main St. Susan Howe and Nathaniel Mackey will read at 7:30 p.m. on April 18, and Michele Leggott and Robin Blaser will read at 7:30 p.m. on April 19.
The poetic system devised by Duncan and Jess was based on mythic traditions and the high romance of 19th-century romantic writers, composers and painters, as well as on fairy tales, myths and legends, George MacDonald novels, Celtic riddles and stories by Hans Christian Andersen.
From these they derived a network or "grand collage" of images and ideas that erupted throughout Duncan's poetry and Jess' visual art. This allowed for a variety of traditions to be articulated in Duncan's work, and offered the reader entry to it through many channels. It is considered an all-important contribution to the direction of what became known as "The New American Poetry."
The movement included not only Duncan, but Charles Olson and Robert Creeley-both of whom became professors at UB, where Creeley still holds the Samuel P. Capen Chair of Poetry and the Humanities.
Olson and Creeley also were associated with Duncan through the revolutionary Black Mountain College, where they all experimented with open form poetry or "open field composition." These poets, along with poet Denise Levertov, John Ashbery and others, enacted a revolution that changed the writing of American poetry after World War II. Duncan visited the UB campus several times between 1968 and 1983 to deliver lectures and visit colleagues, and the UB Poetry/Rare Books Collection now includes many of his important art work, unique productions, first editions and manuscripts.
With poets Jack Spicer and Robin Blaser, Duncan was also part of the literary movement known as "The San Francisco Renaissance," which, among other things, generated a new kind of poem, the "serial poem," which in Duncan's case was published in parts in several of his books.
Conference participants will include:

Marjorie Perloff, Sadie Dernham Professor of Humanities at Stanford University, one of the outstanding literary scholars of her generation and an indefatigable champion of avant-garde thinking of all times.

Jerome McGann, John Stewart Bryan Professor of English at the University of Virginia and author of many influential books that have changed the direction of textual criticism in America.

Susan Howe, UB professor of English and author of the groundbreaking critical study, "My Emily Dickinson" (1985). A poet and scholar of great innovation and distinction, she is also the author of "The Birth-Mark: Unsettling the Wilderness in American Literary History" (1993) and several notable collections of poetry.

Robin Blaser, one of the original members of the 1947 "Berkeley Renaissance" of poetry and a longtime friend and associate of Robert Duncan. Blaser has been publishing poems and essays for 50 years and "The Holy Forest" (1993) established him as one of the distinguished poets of his generation.

Robert Bertholf, curator of the UB Poetry/Rare Books Collection. UB's collection of 20th-century poetry in English is generally considered the finest in the world and its holdings include many of Duncan's rare and first editions, manuscripts and personal artifacts. Bertholf is the author of "Robert Duncan: A Descriptive Bibliography" and editor of "Robert Duncan, Selected Poems" (1993) and "Robert Duncan, A Selected Prose" (1995).

Joseph Conte, UB associate professor of English and author of articles on modernist and postmodernist poetry and of the full-length study, "Unending Design: The Forms of Postmodern Poetry" (1991).

Michele Leggott, a poet and critic who teaches at the University of New Zealand.

Nathaniel Mackey, professor of English at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and author of many articles on Duncan, as well as many books of his own poetry and prose.

Peter Quartermain, professor of English at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, and an enthusiastic champion of Duncan's poetry. He is the author of critical work on poet Basil Bunting and on "disjunctive" poets like Gertrude Stein and Susan Howe.

David Levi Strauss, a former student of Duncan, currently an art critic and essayist for several magazines including Art News. His early poems were collected in "Maneuvers: Poems, 1977-79."