Coda: The “Queen Under the Hill,” or, Robert Duncan’s Lesson in Essential Autobiography
This is a hybrid work of creative scholarship: a lyrical essay that blends personal history with literary criticism. In it, I question my apprenticeship with Duncan when I was a young twenty-something, as I was struggling to understand what it might mean to be a “good gay poet.” In 1987, I traveled...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Centre de Recherche "Texte et Critique de Texte"
2020-12-01
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| Series: | Sillages Critiques |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/sillagescritiques/10777 |
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| Summary: | This is a hybrid work of creative scholarship: a lyrical essay that blends personal history with literary criticism. In it, I question my apprenticeship with Duncan when I was a young twenty-something, as I was struggling to understand what it might mean to be a “good gay poet.” In 1987, I traveled with a copy of Duncan’s The Opening of the Field, and while I could not fully comprehend the poems, the book nevertheless offered me a model – for better and for worse – for sublimating my sexuality during the worst years of the AIDS crisis. Now, thirty-two years later, I return to Duncan’s first “mature” work in an effort to better understand both the book and myself. |
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| ISSN: | 1272-3819 1969-6302 |