awakening. Duncan feels that society has been
abandoned and that there is a certain onus on him
to bring it back from his eccentric position on the
edge as he states “The devout have laid out
gardens in the desert”. In “The truth and life of
myth” he laughs at “the sensory debunkers” who
“would protect our boundaries” (Reisman, 2012).
Here Duncan presents a direct challenge to
convention utilizing the poem’s form to achieve
this end. In the poem “the fire” he draws up a
mosaic of 36 words 6X6 to introduce the definitive
Shaman’s poem.
He questions the reader "Do you know the
language of the old belief? "The answer he gives
describes perfectly the setting and scene of the
atavistic shaman-poet "From the wood, we thot
burning…our animal spirits flee, seeking refuge
wherever, as if in Eden, in this panic". Here
Duncan echoes Ginsberg and his “New Eden” as
he blurs the distinction between the new age
shaman and the traditional shaman with the motif
of fire and dream. In "food for fire, food for
thought" fire is associated with youth. In "bone
dance" he deals with the themes of ageing and
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