Reading Lisa Jarnot on Robert Duncan

Reading over the past couple weeks Lisa Jarnot's excellent 2012 biography of Robert Duncan, I was particularly impressed by the way she was able to construct a linear narrative that, unlike many biographies, remained constantly interesting and engaging. This was due not only to her well-defined abilities as a writer, but to Duncan's always-interesting inner and gadfly outer life, all of which is supplemented by letters to his partner Jess and others, his journals, not to mention the effect of what some might describe as Duncan's mesmerising logorrhoea which so many who met him over the years could not help but comment upon.   

Another aspect of The Ambassador From Venus book was the way Jarnot is invariably able to locate the exact quote from Duncan's work to amplify her point and represent Duncan's life. Though she refrains from parsing the poems- this is, she points out, not a book of criticism- rather, she simply places  bits of poems in their appropriate context. No easy task given Duncan's reliance on metaphor and myth, and his  perambulations, which if not Olsonian- i.e., you talk all around the subject/I didn't know there was a subject- embedded somewhere between the esoteric and the imaginative. 

While Jarnot succeeds at capturing Duncan quotidian reality, she, of course, cannot possibly record every step taken by her subject, even in his public mode. Such as the astonished look on Duncan's face upon hearing a particularly off-the-wall image in an otherwise unremarkable poem by Richard Brautigan at a benefit against the war in Vietnam in 1969. Or  Jarnot does briefly mention a reading Duncan gave at UCLA in 1964. I was a teenager, and it must have been one of the first poetry readings I had occasion to attend. What I remember, and which Jarnot doesn't mention, was Duncan's response to a photographer who was moving around snapping photos during his reading. It prompted Duncan to stop and ask the photographer to stop. When the photographer continued taking photographs, Duncan asked him if he knew what a poet's curse was. However, I did come across towards the end of Jarnot's book, a similar incident in May, 1980, at a reading with Ed Dorn at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Duncan's words being similar to those he made some fifteen years earlier: "There are two things a poet can do: praise and curse." Going on to say his curse will take effect within six months. It made me wonder how many such curses Duncan issued over the years, and to what effect.

Duncan issuing a poet's curse?

His praises are, of course, another matter. They were many. Leading me to another memorable Duncan moment, also not cited by Jarnot. This time at a reading he, and others, gave at the San Francisco State student union in 1971. The reading, which I attended with Jack Gilbert and Linda Gregg, was sponsored by the college's Gay Liberation organisation. While Duncan was holding forth, it was hard not to notice a fair number of young women- some no more than  teenagers- who constituted much of the audience, making regular retreats, usually in pairs, to the toilets at the back of the room, then returning with smiling but flushed faces.  I don't remember what poems Duncan- never one who could be described as entirely monogamous- read, but I do recall what he talked about. It  was one of his extended monologues, this time on the subject of falling in and out of love, eros, and the metaphysics, if can call it that, of stable relationships. He did this in his usual, if slightly subdued, stream-of-consciousness manner, seemingly oblivious to what was going on around him. But he was also in some way subtly commenting on it, not at all criticising it, but giving it a foundation and field of possibility. It was both a  humorous and a very human interaction.  It could be that Duncan's poetry and talk went over the heads of many of the young women, but that was often the case with Duncan's public performances. Still, there was something very touching in Duncan trying and most likely failing to communicate with his young audience. It hardly mattered that they were interested in more tactile matters. While Jack and Linda and whoever else was with us were quick to comment on the  Sapphic aspect of the occasion, no one seemed to have taken into account Duncan's contribution. Yet it was a rare example, one that would have added  to Jarnot's book,  of Duncan engaging with those who, for the most part, weren't all that  interested in what this 50+ year old poet was saying or reading. Not that Duncan, always the teacher, talker, visionary poet and anarchist, was going to let that stop him. It was a rare kind of poet's praise. Leaving the poet's curse for those attempting to steal his soul with intrusive shots.