This volume in the Collected Writings of Robert Duncan series gathers a far-reaching selection of Robert Duncan's prose writings including most of his longer and more well-known essays along with other prose that has never been widely available. Ranging in original publication dates between 1940 and 1985, the forty-one titles reveal a great deal about Duncan's life in poetry-including his impressions of poets whose work he admires, both contemporaries and precursors. Evocative and eclectic, this work delineates the intellectual contexts and sources of Duncan's poetics, and opens a window onto the literary communities in which he participated.

This volume in the Collected Writings of Robert Duncan series gathers a far-reaching selection of Robert Duncan's prose writings including most of his longer and more well-known essays along with other prose that has never been widely available. Ranging in original publication dates between 1940 and 1985, the forty-one titles reveal a great deal about Duncan's life in poetry - including his impressions of poets whose work he admires, both contemporaries and precursors. Evocative and eclectic, this work delineates the intellectual contexts and sources of Duncan's poetics, and opens a window onto the literary communities in which he participated.

In the cut-throat world of Teaching English as a Foreign Language, the Link-a-Lingua school in Milan maintains its status by overcharging its students and underpaying its teachers. But with the summer term in full swing, there is trouble brewing. With ungodly hours, an unmotivated student body and cowboys running the show, it was only a matter of time before the workers grew restless. Mark and Sarah wanted nothing more than a quiet life. They were happily enjoying their Italian adventure. But when the conditions become unbearable, they take it upon themselves to lead the revolt. As attempts at peaceful resolution come to nothing, they realise that nothing short of all-out war will work to bring down the corrupt regime. With a heat wave on the way and the management too cheap to buy air-conditioning, the flies are soon circling the Link-a-Lingua classrooms as tensions begin to mount.

Robert Duncan's "Groundwork," the American poet's unparalleled final masterpiece, is now available in a single volume.
"I am speaking now of the Dream in which America sleeps, the New World, moaning, floundering, in three hundred years of invasions, our own history out of Europe and enslaved Africa."--Robert Duncan, from "Groundwork"
Robert Duncan has been widely venerated as one of America's most essential poets: Allen Ginsberg described his poetry as "rapturous wonderings of inspiration," Gwendolyn Brooks called it "a subtle spice," and Susan Howe pointed to Duncan as "my precursor father," Lawrence Ferlinghetti said he "had the finest ear this side of Dante," and Robert Creeley called him "the magister, the singular Master of the Dance."
Now Duncan's magnum opus, "Groundwork," is available in one groundbreaking edition. The first volume, "Groundwork I: Before the War," was published in 1984, after a fifteen-year publishing silence, and received immediate acclaim: it was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award and won the first National Poetry Award for Duncan's "lifetime devotion to the art of poetry and his grand achievement...." The second volume, "Groundwork II: In the Dark," was published in February 1988, the month of Duncan's death. The internationally renowned poet Michael Palmer has written a marvelous introduction for this new edition, where "the singlemindedness of [Duncan's] life's work shows itself in the confident energy of every line" ("Voice Literary Supplement").