The page said, “Read me.”
I read.
“No,” it said, “READ.”
Read. Meaning, out loud?
“Yes. READ OUT LOUD.”
So I did, sitting in my car parked on a Berkeley sidewalk, I read Robert Duncan’s introduction to his book of poems, Bending the Bow, out loud. His words flowed out of my mouth. His thoughts on the Vietnam War, the reader, equilibration… elegant and moving. He wrote his work to be read, out loud.
I first came across Robert Duncan’s name when I was leafing through Jack Foley’s Visions and Affiliations, A California Literary Time Line Part I. Duncan called his poems “passages”. Recently Jack gave me Bending the Bow. “You have to read Duncan.” He said.
Duncan wants me to hear the music of his work. I looked out to the bright winter sky. Yellowing leaves scattered about by the order of the breeze . Duncan might be just outside my window tapping the rhythms with his fingers. Without a physical body he managed to speak through another’s mouth and lived again.
