Robert Duncan and the Pragmatist Sublime
Robert Duncan and the Pragmatist Sublime
This study examines the theoretical underpinnings of Robert Duncan’s poetry and poetics. The author’s overriding concern is Duncan’s understanding of excess in relation to poetry and the philosophies of Alfred North Whitehead, William James, and John Dewey.
Maynard illuminates how Duncan's encounters with Pragmatist process philosophy helped catalyze one of the richest, most groundbreaking bodies of poetic art created since 1940.'--Robert Kaufman, University of California, Berkeley
This book is a treasure trove of archival gems that Maynard has unearthed in his many years of residence among the poet’s papers.
James Maynard is the curator of the Poetry Collection at the University at Buffalo. His edition of Robert Duncan: Collected Essays and Other Prose received the Poetry Foundation’s 2014 Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism. He is currently editing a volume of Duncan’s uncollected prose.
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Abbreviations
Chapter One. The Pragmatist Sublime
Chapter Two. "Seas of desire": Duncan and Surrealism 1939-1941
Chapter Three. Extending the Field: Whitehead and the Poetics of Organism
Chapter Four. The Plurality of "What Is": The Poetics and Politics of Duncan’s Multiphasic Sublime
Chapter Five. Architect of Excess
Notes
Works Cited
Index
