Coda: The War of Poetry: Duncan’s Heresies

This essay focuses on Duncan’s Tribunals: Passages 31-35, originally published as a separate chapbook in 1970, and the prose surrounding it, such as the earlier “The Sweetness and Greatness of Dante’s Divine Comedy” of 1964, as a central focus of the struggle of Duncan’s war with and for form, the s...

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Main Author: Michael Heller
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Centre de Recherche "Texte et Critique de Texte" 2020-12-01
Series:Sillages Critiques
Subjects:
Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/sillagescritiques/10221
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author Michael Heller
author_facet Michael Heller
author_sort Michael Heller
collection DOAJ
description This essay focuses on Duncan’s Tribunals: Passages 31-35, originally published as a separate chapbook in 1970, and the prose surrounding it, such as the earlier “The Sweetness and Greatness of Dante’s Divine Comedy” of 1964, as a central focus of the struggle of Duncan’s war with and for form, the site of risk, undoing and resolution. The “war” in which he is a protagonist most often wrestling with himself but also with the cultural and political environment in which he writes, is to liberate form – not to choose one form over another – but to bring form to possibility, to express form as the creative artist’s fulfillment of “the law that he creates,” to see poetry’s “every freedom,” as leading toward human liberation. Duncan often referred to himself as a “derivative poet.” This article discusses how such derivations were both an embrace and a strategy, each leading to a supersession of a poetics that enlarged the notion of poetry, selfhood and possibility.
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series Sillages Critiques
spelling doaj-art-28e628ee7b3942e9b451be9f3bc72a972025-01-30T13:47:25ZengCentre de Recherche "Texte et Critique de Texte"Sillages Critiques1272-38191969-63022020-12-012910.4000/sillagescritiques.10221Coda: The War of Poetry: Duncan’s HeresiesMichael HellerThis essay focuses on Duncan’s Tribunals: Passages 31-35, originally published as a separate chapbook in 1970, and the prose surrounding it, such as the earlier “The Sweetness and Greatness of Dante’s Divine Comedy” of 1964, as a central focus of the struggle of Duncan’s war with and for form, the site of risk, undoing and resolution. The “war” in which he is a protagonist most often wrestling with himself but also with the cultural and political environment in which he writes, is to liberate form – not to choose one form over another – but to bring form to possibility, to express form as the creative artist’s fulfillment of “the law that he creates,” to see poetry’s “every freedom,” as leading toward human liberation. Duncan often referred to himself as a “derivative poet.” This article discusses how such derivations were both an embrace and a strategy, each leading to a supersession of a poetics that enlarged the notion of poetry, selfhood and possibility.https://journals.openedition.org/sillagescritiques/10221warmythRobert DuncanDante AlighieriPaul Cézanneheresy
spellingShingle Michael Heller
Coda: The War of Poetry: Duncan’s Heresies
Sillages Critiques
war
myth
Robert Duncan
Dante Alighieri
Paul Cézanne
heresy
title Coda: The War of Poetry: Duncan’s Heresies
title_full Coda: The War of Poetry: Duncan’s Heresies
title_fullStr Coda: The War of Poetry: Duncan’s Heresies
title_full_unstemmed Coda: The War of Poetry: Duncan’s Heresies
title_short Coda: The War of Poetry: Duncan’s Heresies
title_sort coda the war of poetry duncan s heresies
topic war
myth
Robert Duncan
Dante Alighieri
Paul Cézanne
heresy
url https://journals.openedition.org/sillagescritiques/10221
work_keys_str_mv AT michaelheller codathewarofpoetryduncansheresies