The H.D. Book [Paperback]

This magisterial work, long awaited and long the subject of passionate speculation, is an unprecedented exploration of modern poetry and poetics by one of Americas 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 Duncans 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, Duncans wide-ranging book is especially notable for its illumination of the role women played in creation of literary modernism. Until now,The H.D. Bookexisted 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 workat once an encyclopedia of modernism, a reinterpretation of its key players and texts, and a record of Duncans quest toward a new poeticsis at last complete and available to a wide audience.

Robert Duncan(19191988) was born in Oakland and spent most of his life in California. One of the major figures in the San Francisco Renaissance, Duncan, often identified with Donald Allen's landmark anthologyThe New American Poetryand the Black Mountain poets, is author ofThe Opening of the Field, Roots and Branches,andBending the Bow,among other works.
Michael Boughnis a poet, scholar, and fiction writer. His many publications includeH.D.: A Bibliography, 19051990, Dislocations in Crystal, Into the World of the Dead,and22 Skidoo/SubTractions.
Victor Colemanwas a founding editor of Coach House Press and is author ofone / eye / love, Light Verse,andICON TACTamong many other books of poetry.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction

Book One: Beginnils