The H.D. BookThis magisterial work, long awaited and long the subject of passionate speculation, is an unprecedented exploration of modern poetry and poetics by one of America’s most acclaimed and influential postwar poets. What began in 1959 as a simple homage to the modernist poet H.D. developed into an expansive and unique quest to arrive at a poetics that would fuel Duncan’s great work in the 1970s. A meditation on both the roots of modernism and its manifestation in the work of H.D., Ezra Pound, D.H. Lawrence, William Carlos Williams, Edith Sitwell, and many others, Duncan’s wide-ranging book is especially notable for its illumination of the role women played in creation of literary modernism. Until now, The H.D. Book existed only in mostly out-of-print little magazines in which its chapters first appeared. Now, for the first time published in its entirety, as its author intended, this monumental work—at once an encyclopedia of modernism, a reinterpretation of its key players and texts, and a record of Duncan’s quest toward a new poetics—is at last complete and available to a wide audience. |
Contents
Chapter I | 35 |
Chapter 2 | 69 |
Eros | 79 |
Palimpsest | 100 |
Occult Matters | 124 |
Rites of Participation | 153 |
Chapter I | 203 |
Chapter 2 | 253 |
Chapter 6 | 403 |
Chapter 7 | 427 |
Chapter 8 | 442 |
Chapter 9 | 467 |
Chapter 10 | 527 |
Chapter II | 547 |
Preliminary Notes toward | 591 |
Composition and Publication | 647 |
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Common terms and phrases
actual Angels appears artist beauty become beginning belong Bryher called Cantos Charles Olson child Christ consciousness creative cult D. H. Lawrence daemonic Dante divine dream Duncan Egypt Eliot Eros eternal Euripides experience Ezra Pound Fall father feeling figure fire Flowering Freud genius Gnostic gods Greek H.D. Book heart Helen in Egypt hidden human idea imagination Imagist inner Isis Joyce language Lawrence light literary living London magic man’s Marianne Moore Mary Butts matter meaning mind mother mystery Narthex occult Palimpsest person Pisan Cantos play poem poet poet’s poetic poetry Pound present Projective Verse psyche Raymonde reality revealed Romance Sally Rand says scene secret sense sexual soul spirit stars Stesichorus story tells things thought thru tion Tribute Trilogy truth turn universe vision voice Walls William Carlos Williams Williams woman words writes Yeats