Robert Duncan’s Long Poem Debates and his Poetics of Grand Collage

Abstract

This article examines Robert Duncan’s debates in poetics that distinguish Charles Olson’s long poem The Maximus Poems from his own work in order to understand the function of the poems named “Passages” in Duncan’s oeuvre from 1968 on. The definitions of collage and of Grand Collage for Duncan further illuminate his resistance to the long poem.

Keywords

• Robert Duncan
• Charles Olson
• 20th century United States poetry
• long poem
• serial poem
• poetics