Albequerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2017. First Edition. Hardcover. "In Robert Duncan's lectures on Charles Olson, given occasionally from 1961 to 1983, there is a full-throated challenge to the hegemony of New Criticism as an aesthetic and critical practice. Each lecture addresses Olson's notion of "projective verse" (for Duncan, "field poetics"), a method of composition that encourages the variables of personal creative practice to interact within a larger..... More

Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Shuffaloff Press, 1995. Limited First Trade Edition. Stapled Wrappers. “What do I want to say about Robert Duncan’s early poems? Waiting for the morning news, waiting to write an answer to my own question, I hear on the radio that someone who’s read Joyce’s Ulysses could win a Chevrolet, because practically nobody has: “Do you know what it means? Write us. Frankly, we haven't a clue.” The..... More

Buffalo, NY: Audit/Poetry Incorporated, 1967. First Edition. Stapled Wrappers. “The Caliph of Hunger remembering/lived out a full feast./Hearts like roasts laid themselves open./The wine flowd from the glasses/in themselves./The hearts beat with longing,/sweet to his taste.”--Robert Duncan, A Derivation from Rimbaud, first stanza, pg. 30. Robert Duncan (1919-1988), the great American poet & author of the Black Mountain School- San Francisco Renaissance-&-Beyond, is widely considered one of the finest poets..... More

London, England, UK: Fulcrum Press, 1969. First Trade Edition. Hardcover. "In making this selection from the first decade of my work I have sought not only to include certain poems which have been particularly admired by those who admire my poetry at all, but, more important, to provide those texts which at this time I see as essential for a serious reading of evolving themes and forms; and, back of..... More

Berkeley, CA: Oyez Press, 1966. First Edition. Stapled Wrappers. (Bertholf A19, pp. 70-73). “For the Good, / […] / the good of the people / the soul’s good. / I put aside / whatever I once served of the poet, master / of enchanting words and magics, / not to disown the old mysteries, sweet / muthos / our mouth’s telling. / and I will still tell the beads, in..... More

Buffalo, NY: Shuffaloff / Eternal Network, 2012. Limited First Edition Thus. Stapled Wrappers. A volume of poems by Robert Duncan (1919-1988), the great American poet & author of the Black Mountain School- San Francisco Renaissance-&-Beyond. As the colophon at the back of the work (which we quote in full, later on in the body of this curation), this is a charming facsimile of a chapbook that Duncan hand-made & gifted..... More

Albuquerque, NM: Sumbooks, 1964. Limited First Trade Edition. Stapled Wrappers. "The word in the hand is the sound in the eye is the / sight in the listening mind. Listen, do you mind. Mind / than the solid pattern of all this soundless patter, / collected together only in the writing." ("Writing As Writing," first stanza, unpaginated) A collection of poems & prose-poems by Robert Duncan (1919-1988), the great American..... More

San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books, 2013. First Edition. Softcover. “After his graduation from Black Mountain College, Michael Rumaker made his way to the post-Howl, pre-Stonewall gay literary milieu of San Francisco, where he entered the circle of Robert Duncan. Contrasting Duncan’s daringly frank homosexuality with Rumaker’s own then-closeted life, Robert Duncan in San Francisco conjures up with harrowing detail an era of police persecution of a clandestine gay community..... More

Washington, DC: The National Observer, 1966. First Printing. Single Sheet. “The continuing development here of what its practitioners call “The New American Poetry” is surely one of the major untold stories of our time. That a movement so serious, so vital, and so accomplished should remain, years after its inception, largely unknown to most people and misunderstood by others is surprising. Comparable postwar developments in the arts—abstract expressionism, black humor..... More

Burton, OH: The Credences Press, 1977. First Printing. Stapled Wrappers. A literary journal edited by Robert Bertholf (1940-2016), a celebrated scholar and bibliographer of works by the noted San Francisco Renaissance poet, Robert Duncan (1919-1988). In addition to the panoply of “West Coast” Beat affiliations that might well be cited in discussions of Duncan’s life and work, another strain affected its development equally. This one, as scholars of Mid-Century American..... More

San Francisco, CA: The Rivoli Review, 1964. First Printing. Stapled Wrappers. Offered here is the second (of two) issues of the rare-&-elusive Rivoli Review, edited by the Utah-born San Francisco Renaissance poet, Richard Duerden (1927-2000). While comparatively unknown among those frequently associated with the San Francisco Renaissance, Duerden bears the echoic Beat-historical distinction of having once served in the Merchant Marines (e.g., like Jack Kerouac [1922-1969], among several other great..... More

Grants Pass, OR: Castle Peak Editions, 1992. First Edition. Softcover. Signed and dated by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. “The original plan for this collection of essays and creative work dates back about ten years, to plans for a Festschrift to mark the poet’s seventieth birthday. Wayne Holder was the initiating editor. In the usual way contributions were requested; precisely on what basis is not now known. Whereupon–by indirections, revolutionary times, and California’s..... More

New York, NY: Contact II Publications, 1987. First Printing. Stapled Wrappers. A highbrow literary journal from the late 1970s edited by the poet, Maurice Kenny (1929-2016) and J.G. Gosciak. What this writer, Your Devoted VP-of-Operations here at Third Mind Books, would like readers to notice about this late literary journal—which originated in the late 1970s—is the level at which the discourse is operating. Its topics, in other words — everything..... More