Robert Duncan born 7 January 1919 (d. 1988)Robert Duncan was an American poet who spent most of his career in and around San Francisco. Though associated with any number of literary traditions and schools, Duncan is often identified with the New American Poetry and Black Mountain poets. Duncan's mature work emerged in the 1950s from within the literary context of Beat culture and today he is also identified as a key figure in the San Francisco Renaissance.
Duncan was born in Oakland, California as Edward Howard Duncan Jr. His mother had died in childbirth and his father could not manage a small baby by himself while raising Robert's older brothers and sisters, so in 1920 he was adopted by Edwin and Minnehaha Symmes, a family of devout Theosophists. They renamed him Robert Edward Symmes; it was only in 1941 that he formed the composite of his previous names and became Robert Edward Duncan.
At age three, Duncan was injured in an accident on the snow which resulted in his becoming cross-eyed and seeing double. His adoptive status, his religious parents and his double vision were key influences in his early writing.
After his adopted father's death in 1936, Duncan started studying at the University of California, Berkeley. He began writing poems inspired in part by his left wing politics and acquired a reputation as a bohemian. Duncan thrived as storyteller, poet, and fledgling bohemian, but by his sophomore year he had begun to drop classes and had quit attending obligatory military drills.
In 1938, he briefly attended Black Mountain College, but left after a dispute with faculty on the subject of the Spanish Civil War. He spent two years in Philadelphia and then moved to Woodstock, New York, to join a commune run by James Cooney.
Duncan’s name figures prominently in the history of pre-Stonewall gay culture, particularly with the publication of 'The Homosexual in Society'. While in Philadelphia, Duncan had a relationship with a male instructor he had first met in Berkeley. In 1941 he was drafted and declared his homosexuality to get discharged. In 1943, he had his first heterosexual relationship. This ended in a short, disastrous marriage. In 1944, he published 'The Homosexual in Society', an essay in which he compared the plight of homosexuals with that of African Americans and Jews.
Duncan returned to San Francisco in 1945. He returned to Berkeley to study Medieval and Renaissance literature and cultivated a reputation as a shamanistic figure in San Francisco poetry and artistic circles. He also became friends with fellow poets Jack Spicer and Robin Blaser, plus novelist Philip K. Dick.From 1951 until his death, he lived with the artist Jess Collins, increasingly influenced by the pleasures of gay domestic harmony. Before then, Duncan began a relationship with Robert De Niro Sr, the father of famed actor Robert De Niro, shortly before DeNiro Sr broke up with his wife, artist Virginia Admiral.
In the early 1950s he started publishing in Cid Corman's Origin and the Black Mountain Review and in 1956 he spent a time teaching at the Black Mountain College. These connections were instrumental in getting some of the Black Mountain poets involved in the San Francisco Renaissance.
During the 1960s, Duncan achieved considerable artistic and critical success with three books: The Opening of the Field (1960), Roots and Branches (1964) and Bending the Bow (1968). These are generally considered to be his most significant works.