“Invaluable archival documents. . . . Those familiar with Duncan’s essays will find in these lectures his characteristic syntactical complexity and conceptual denseness.”—Eric Keenaghan, Journal of Modern Literature
“In these two companion volumes [An Open Map and Imagining Persons] . . . the letters are complete, the lectures are beveled, and a nimble apparatus of introductions, notes, glossaries, bibliographies, and indices nearly half as long as the texts themselves collapses the distance between these documents’ moment and our own.”—Jacket2
“In these lectures, Duncan explores the meaning and context of Olson’s poetry and dynamic presence as poet and innovator, while also providing a broader representation of poetry and thought, ancient and modern, delivered with wit, intelligence, curiosity, and care. Essential reading for anyone interested in . . . the work of two of the most important poets of the postwar period.”—Peter O’Leary, author of Gnostic Contagion: Robert Duncan and the Poetry of Illness