Life, War, and Love: The Queer Anarchism of Robert Duncan's Poetic Action during the Vietnam War

Abstract

Robert Duncan would achieve national prominence as a featured poet in Donald Allen's anthology The New American Poetry (1960), which helped to establish him as _one of the innovators of open-form poetics. But the poli tics underlying his poetics have largely been forgotten. Almost thirty years ago, Sherman Paul asked if it was possible to read Duncan as writ[ing] the politics of his time (257). Such a reappraisal, Paul knew, would necessitate adjusting the common left-wing precepts about the relationship between poetry and poli tics. There is another way of assessing his politics and coming to an understanding of what it means to be a political poet, Paul mused (262). What the critic leaves us, though, are merely clues about what that other understanding might be: Duncan's defiance of domi neering authority (241); an early alignment with political anar chism (261); a commitment to the Heraclitean principle of creative (172); his inviting such strife into his life by say[ing] 'yes' to eros (227) so as to ward off an oncoming, always ever-present death (273). One factor mentioned by Paul?anarchism?has received little critical attention, but it could help synthesize the vari ous elements of Duncan's poetics to account for his definitive poli tics.1 At its core, anarchism is a political philosophy opposing the