He was influenced by these writers early in his career as well as by Edith Sitwell, Jean Cocteau, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, and the French Surrealists. In New York he followed exhibitions in art galleries and museums and witnessed the emergence of Abstract Expressionism. Throughout his writing life his poems were dominated by an intense attention to artistic form that came from his life within artists' circles and museums. His article "The Homosexual in Society" appeared in the magazine
Politics in 1944; the essay was an honest call for sexual freedom and individual rights. He eventually returned to the San Francisco area in 1945. Moving to Berkeley in the spring of 1946, he soon met Spicer and Blaser and launched "the Berkeley Renaissance." He again attended the university (1948-1950), studying medieval and Renaissance civilization under the noted scholar Ernst Kantorowicz. In 1951 Duncan began his long-standing relationship with the painter Jess Collins, and in 1952 he joined the group of poets publishing in
Origin magazine, after responding to a poem by Denise Levertov published there.
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