Selected poems

This revised and enlarged edition of selections from Duncan's ten major collections comes only a few years after the last (LJ 3/1/93), incorporating minor changes Duncan made before his death in 1988, and adding only 11 poems, all written before the mid-1960s. A romantic with a passion for experimentation, Duncan assimilated and transformed influences as diverse as Dante, Blake, Eliot, and Stein, embroidering a dense tapestry of allusive and emotionally generous vatic poetry for a postwar audience haunted by a sense of fragmentation and loss, yet energized by newfound aesthetic and spiritual possibilities. If at times his poems echo the intonation of ancient texts or trust too much to the reader's scholarly inclinations, they also revel in the here and now ("And it is the beauty of where we have been living that is the poetry of the hour.") with equal conviction. Recommended, but note that this edition differs only marginally from 1993's, and is no substitute for a much needed collected poems.‘Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib., Ithaca, N.Y. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.