DUNCAN, Robert. Selected Poems. San Francisco: City Lights Books. 1959.
Small 4to. Brown and white card wrappers; pp. [4], 5-80; fading of cream front wrapper, vague offsetting caused by the printed border of the cover; otherwise near fine.
First edition, second printing.
A formidable figure of the Postwar Poets, Robert Duncan was an integral personality in the Black Mountain School alongside names like Charles Olsen. This was a movement whose emphasis on techniques such as "projective verse" would heavily influence his material.
Duncan's name also has a significant association with gay culture preceding the Stonewall Riots. In 1944, he penned the famous essay The Homeosexual in Society. This treatise established Duncan as one of the first leading Americans to speak openly of his sexuality as well as to reveal the status of his sexuality a decade before any organised gay movement existed.
It was this first publication by City Lights that would broaden his audience to an international audience.
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