Reviews for The Letters of Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov

The average rating for The Letters of Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-07-16 00:00:00 Meeaii Tang I don't know that the Duncan/Levertov correspondence is either "the most important exchange between two American poets in the second half of the twentieth century" or the grand poetic slap-off between "a gnostic … and an incarnational theology" that Al Gelpi claims in the Intro it is, but I found a lot in the bristling exchanges over the Vietnam War (Duncan I guess as the 'gnostic' protester, Levertov the hand-in-the-wound incarnational) to warm the embers of our 'poetry as protest' conversations today. This may have less to do with Levertov and Duncan's continuing influence than with the continuous succession of wrongheaded U.S. wars poets keep having to face. Aside from the war stuff, it's fun to listen in on learned poets writing to each other about other now famous poets in less than reverential ways, and to fantasize about the days when real stamp-and-glued-flap letters like this got swapped over years and years; the gender politics implicit in the correspondence is also compelling. I'll have to spend more time with it though, sifting the quotidian from the "second half of the twentieth century" important, to have the transformational experience that other friends who've reviewed this here did. While I wait, there's gems like this (Duncan to Levertov on Bay Area readings, 1957): "So it's only one reading--which hereabouts means an hour to an hour and a half....The audiences here are avid and toughend--they've survived top poetry read badly; ghastly poetry read ghastly; the mediocre read with theatrical flourish; poets in advanced stages of discomfort, egomania mumbling; grand style, relentless insistence, professional down-the-nosism, charm, calm, schizophrenic disorder, pious agony, auto-erotic hypnosis, bellowing, hatred, pity, snarl, and snub."

Review # 2 was written on 2020-12-11 00:00:00 Anthony Melo The book is marvelously edited and fascinating, but boy, I find it hard not to be put off by the pedantry of Duncan through the whole thing (even when he had a few worthy points in his criticism) and felt a sort of relief when Levertov finally called him on it toward the end.