Robert Duncan's poetry established the San Francisco Bay area as a major center for poetry in the United States. There were other poets--Kenneth Rexroth, James Broughton, Jack Spicer, and Robin Blaser--but it was Duncan's authority as a poet that struck the attention of other poets and readers. Together with Charles Olson and Robert Creeley, Duncan is also known as one of the principal Black Mountain Poets, having taught briefly at the experimental Black Mountain College (March-August 1956) in western North Carolina. Duncan was born in Oakland, California. His mother, Marguerite Wesley Duncan, died shortly after giving birth, and his father, Edward Howard Duncan, a day laborer, was unable to keep the child. He was adopted by a couple who were "orthodox theosophists" and who chose the baby on the basis of the astrological chart they drew. He grew up as Robert Edward Symmes, and his first poems were published...