Heavenly City

Robert Duncan's first book, Heavenly City, Earthly City was published by Bern Porter in Berkeley in 1948. The title poem from this volume was chosen by James Laughlin for inclusion in the 1948 volume of New Directions in Prose and Poetry, an annual exhibition gallery of new and divergent trends in literature. The New Directions volume is simply designed, clearly printed and editorially sophisticated, signaled by a dedication to the elegant and tasteful Alfred and Blanche Knopf. “who over the years of there publishing have greatly enriched American culture by providing English translations of significant European Books." Duncan, who is described in the contributors note for him as “young California poet” is in heady company in the volume, which includes essays by Mary McCarthy and Evelyn Waugh (on Hollywood) and fiction by Paul Bowles, Howard Nemerov, Paul Goodman, Carson McCullers, James Agee and Tennesse Williams. It is an intellectual and leftist cast of characters, but a tasteful one and in fact Laughlin provides “A Few random Notes From the Editor” his impressions of the war torn landscapes of Europe, still to him more aesthetically appealing than America. There is a bit of anti-communist rhetoric thrown in too, perhaps to soften the international flavor of the volume, which includes New Poems from Peru (A Little Anthology), A Little Anthology of Italian Poetry (Ungaretti, Montale and others) and a Little Anthology of French Poetry (Char, Michaux, Eluard, Gracq, Prevert). Other poets included in the volume are Richard Eberhart, Vernon Watkins, Pieter Vierck, William Jay Smith and Richard Wilbur. Duncan's long poem takes up 9 pages and has pride of place in the volume with more space than any other poet in the volume. The poem itself is in three sections with an overture, and is a gnostic confabulation of longing, love, bad reactions to love and confusion.