A Selected Prose

This collection assembles a variety of prose pieces by poet Duncan (Fictive Certainties), some previously unpublished. Ranging from notes to close readings of his contemporaries, the writings convey a sense of Duncan's poetics, which owes much to William Carlos Williams, Charles Olson and Whitman. Indeed, the long essay ``Changing Perspectives in Reading Whitman'' is perhaps the most interesting in the volume. In it, Duncan finds a precursor of his own theory of emergent form: ``Whitman was the poet of primary intuitions, ancestor of Whitehead's Process and Reality and of our own vision of creation where now we see all of life as unfoldings, the revelations of a field of potentialities and latencies.'' In his emphasis on discovery rather than the imposition of order (``I don't seek a synthesis, but a melee.''), Duncan prefigures chaos theory and process-oriented pedagogy. Politically, his idealism of openness led to a radical conception of democracy. While the essays often employ a difficult syntax that seems anything but spontaneous, they make a strong case for Duncan as a thinker. (Feb.)