• DOI:10.1353/jml.2005.0054
• Corpus ID: 153457298

Vulnerable Households: Cold War Containment and Robert Duncan's Queered Nation

@article{Keenaghan2005VulnerableHC,
  title={Vulnerable Households: Cold War Containment and Robert Duncan's Queered Nation},
  author={Eric Keenaghan},
  journal={Journal of Modern Literature},
  year={2005},
  volume={28},
  pages={57 - 90}
}

• Eric Keenaghan
• Published 2 November 2005
• Art
• Journal of Modern Literature

His early essay "The Homosexual in Society" (1944, revised 1959), the same-sex erotica of his early collection Caesars Gate (1972, origi nally published 1955), and his undaunted use of homosexual themes throughout his oeuvre concretize Robert Duncan's formidable contribution to a gay male American literary tradition. As friend and fellow poet Thorn Gunn remarked in 1979, he should be regarded as the "chief originator" of "a way of speaking about homosexuality" even though he produced "the work of a poet, of a homosexual poet only secondarily" (159). Gunn s observations give an insightful point of entry into what is especially remarkable about his friend's poetry and its commitment to representations of homosexuality: it is a secondary concern. What Duncan pioneers, then, is the capacity for American letters to include and frankly address homosexual content without elevating it (or deni grating it, depending on one's perspective) to the motivating force behind his poetics. Rather than sexuality, per se, his work brings to light the significance of erotic attachment and relationships, no matter the form they may take. Gunn cites Duncan's homosexual themes as proof of the "inclusiveness" that makes modern poetry suitable for providing "evidence of the many ways in which people live their lives, of the many available ways in which people love or fail to love" (159-60). Universalism is suggestively equated with the revolution in consciousness promulgated by poetic discourse. Despite the topicality of same-sex love in much of his work, Duncan continuously disidentified with gayness. Decades before Stonewall and the subsequent gay liberation movement, his essay "The Homosexual in Society" was written for the journal Politics as an espousal of anarchism and universal