A Collection of Twenty-Three Works ; Including: Heavenly City, Earthly City; The Opening of the Field; Derivations; Faust Foutu; Letters; Tribunals; Bending the Bow
various: various, 1947-1997. 23 volumes in various formats including hardcovers, wrappers, proofs, offprints, and ephemera. Condition generally fine or near fine, with several signed limited editions and numbered copies. Notable items include Heavenly City, Earthly City (1947)—first edition, one of 250 copies in white boards, signed by publisher Bern Porter, Duncan's uncommon first book; Poems 1948-49 (1949)—second issue, signed by author with a drawing; Faust Foutu (1960)—first complete edition, mimeographed, limited to 750 copies; The Years As Catches (1966)—one of 30 hors de commerce copies with endpapers extensively hand-illustrated by Duncan; Derivations (1968)—one of 150 numbered copies signed; Poetic Disturbances (1970)—one of 50 numbered copies signed; and the rare mimeographed Towards An Open Universe (1964), with only two institutional copies located. Item #1269
This comprehensive collection traces Duncan's work across fifty years from his first book This comprehensive collection spans fifty years from Duncan's first book through posthumous selected editions. Duncan worked simultaneously within the Berkeley Renaissance, the San Francisco Renaissance, and Black Mountain poetics while maintaining intellectual and aesthetic commitments that distinguished him from all three movements. His poetic practice drew upon modernist innovation, medieval mysticism, and hermetic traditions, creating dense, allusive verse that incorporated Dante, H.D., Gertrude Stein, and occult philosophy into a visionary cosmology that resisted categorization within conventional literary historical narratives.
Duncan's collaborations with key small press publishers defined postwar American poetry's material culture: Bern Porter's visionary hand-press productions, Jonathan Williams's Jargon Society advocacy for experimental writing, and John Martin's Black Sparrow Press establishment of production standards for contemporary poetry.
Price: $5,000.00