richard duerden

for a while now i've been very interested in & by the late SF Renaissance poet richard dueden.  i first became acquainted with duerden's poetry upon first reading it in donald allen's seminal & influential 1960 anthology.  his bio is terse.  he states that he wa raised in the Bay Area, served in the merchant marines & took classes at UC Berkeley.  the Bay Area was where duerden made his home until his death in 2000.

duerden was in the smack dab center of where the good shit was happening.  his best friend is the poet larry kearney.  he knew jack spicer quite well [duerden is in spicer's bio Poet Be Like God by lewis ellingham & kevin killian (university press of new england; 1998)].  philip whalen lived in his garage [see whalen's poem 'Duerden's Garage, Stinson Beach' esp. the concluding stanza where duerden's cat Alfy makes himself known].  apparently duerden was quite fond of cats.  i believe duncan mcnaughton also has a poem where duerden's cats frolic.  joanne kyger was an ally.  so was robert duncan.  i've been told that duerden didn't like his photo taken so there is a dearth of images of his visage but duncan's longtime partner, the great artist jess, painted a portrait of duncan, with duerden & a few other bay area poets, playing poker.  

the following is the intro by robert creeley to duerden's book The Air's Nearly Perfect Elasticity [tombouctou; 1979]

this book arrived this afternoon.  i'm thrilled to have it.  i'm still reading, studying & falling in love with richard duerden.  how to explain love?  or why?  sometimes when it comes to falling in love we have no choice in the matter.  we just do.  but i think it might be for, among countless reasons, that richard durden created a life in poetry, outside the academy.  he was in the thick of it.  i understand when duerden discovered pound he hanged pages of the Cantos in his apartment in SF.  

in the meantime, there are the poems.  duerden's work is not rare even as it should be, i think, better known.  his correspondence with whalen is archived at reed college.  duerden's work & more of his correspondence is archived at stanford.  i'm not a scholar or academic but a poet in love with life & reading/writing [watching horror movies too!].  as the beatles said, let it be.  & as the stones retorted, let it bleed.  i have the poetry of richard duerden.