XVIII
Robert Duncan has a profoundly metaphysical
voice, he is the high priest of the esoteric cult of
poetry, influenced by Dante, Whitman, Emerson,
Shakespeare, Ginsberg etc. and conjures up
mystical
lyricism
which
seeks
cosmic
transcendence “I come to sense and to learn of the
universe and its elements” (Regensburg, 1986). He
was a friend of Olsen and McClure, also working
with Jack Spicer, Kenneth Rexroth and Robin
Blaser. He is known for linking the "Black
Mountain Poets" with the San Francisco
Renaissance. As a gay man, like Spicer, he felt
himself to be "an artist on the margin", distanced
from "the accepted paradigms and conventions of
the Protestant ethic” (Reisman, 2012). This is key
to understanding his contemporary shaman-poet
visions. According to Eliade, the shaman appears
in an awakened state of sensibility and
understanding, this parallels with Duncan who
says “You have carried a branch of tomorrow into
the room- its fragrance has awakened me”
(Reisman, 2012). Here his eclectic position as
outsider becomes a vista for a shamanistic
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