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Aurelia & Other Writings

Gerard De Nerval

Aurelia is a document of dreams, obsession, and insanity. An account of Nerval's unrequited passion for an actress and subsequent descent into madness, this book was a favorite of artist Joseph Cornell's, and its author was championed by both Marcel Proust and Andre Breton. One of the original self-styled "bohemians," Nerval was best known in his own day for parading a lobster on a pale blue ribbon through the gardens of the Palais-Royal, and for his suicide in 1855, hanging from an apron string he called the garter of the Queen of Sheba. Geoffrey Wagner's translation of Aurelia was first published by Grove Press in 1959, but has remained out of print for nearly twenty years. Included are previously untranslated stories, and poet Robert Duncan's version of the sonnet cycle "Chimeras"- making this the most complete collection of Nerval ever published in English.
Letters: Poems 1953-56

Robert Duncan
Groundwork: Before the War/In the Dark (New Directions Paperbook)

Robert Duncan

Robert Duncan's Groundwork, the American poet's unparalleled final masterpiece, is now available in a single volume.

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).
Ground Work: Before the War

Robert Duncan

first of two volumes of the poet's last work
Bending the Bow

Robert Duncan

poetry, incl the first 30 poems of series PASSAGES
Collected Poems: 1919-1979 (Talisman Classic American Poets)

Madeline Gleason

A key figure in the San Francisco Renaissance, Madeline Gleason (1903-1979) was one of the few women whose work was included in Donald Allen's landmark anthology, THE NEW AMERICAN POETRY (1960). Includes an afterword by Robert Duncan.
Copy Book Entries

Robert Duncan
Derivations

Robert Duncan
Faust Foutu

Robert Edward Duncan, Robert Duncan

Long unavailable text of an early dramatic masque by Robert Duncan, the late major American poet and "San Francisco Renaissance" figure. Faust Foutu (Faust Screwed) is a satire featuring a mid-20th-century Faust as a bourgeois artist "suffering" for his art. It was first performed by poets and painters in San Francisco in 1955. The book includes drawings by the poet made to accompany the printed text.
A Little Endarkenment, and in My Poetry You Will Find Me

Robert Duncan

July 1978 interview at Naropa Institute, Boulder
A Seventeenth Century Suite in Homage to the Metaphysical Genius in English Poetry 1590 to 1690: Being Imitations, Derivations and Variations Upon Certain Conceits and Findings Made Among Strong Lines

Robert Duncan

Stapled booklet of Duncan's poems.
Years As Catches

Robert Duncan