Rumaker, Michael (Duncan, Robert)

Robert Duncan in San Francisco

ISBN: 9780872865907
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 struggling to survive in the otherwise “open city” of San Francisco. This expanded edition includes a selection of previously unpublished letters between Rumaker and Duncan, and an interview conducted for this edition, in which Rumaker provides further reflections on the poet and the period” (from back cover copy). Here we have a key, though oft-overlooked work of Beat-literary scholarship: Michael Rumaker’s (1932-2019) memoir-history of his apprenticeship to the great American poet, Robert Duncan (1919-1988). Duncan, while contemporaneously affiliated in almost equal measure with both the “Black Mountain” & “San Francisco Renaissance” traditions, is first and foremost a San Francisco Poet. This is an important demarcation because North Carolina’s “Black Mountain College” — founded in 1933 by renegade educator, John Andrew Rice (1888-1968) — was only a school of the ‘literary arts’ in its final period (under the inspired, though multifariously discombobulated Rectorship of poet, Charles Olson (1910-1970). The fact that we even consider the short-lived rule of literature at Black Mountain — decidedly a school of education and the visual arts for the bulk of its history — a ‘school of literature’ is a compliment to this flailing, though inspired final period (and those who both taught and studied there). Olson & Duncan were two such teachers — and Rumaker one such student. His book, “Black Mountain Days,” is a great supplement to this work — but this work, as far as Duncan is concerned, is far more essential. Read this, and you’ll be among a select group of scholars who understand the San Francisco Renaissance for what it is: a politically-charged, aesthetically-motivated, stylistically original development in American literature. A dazzling development, worth studying and learning of (at length!) still, today. From the collection of Robin Eichele (b. 1941), noted Mimeograph Revolutionary & co-founder (with John Sinclair) of the Detroit Artists’ Workshop. Softcover Original: the First (&-only) Edition of this scholastically invaluable work of Beat literary history. In strong very fine condition (bordering, frankly, on "As New" designation) with only minute shelf-wear, light bumping to fine-edges & corners of front, back covers & spine-edge, otherwise pristine. Very Fine. [Item #6906]

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