The essays in this collection examine the breadth of Eigner's interests and influence, considering issues pertaining to ecopoetics, race and ethnicity, disability, technology, media, soundscapes, phenomenology, and popular culture.

Profoundly original yet insistent on the derivative quality of his work, transgressive yet affirmative of tradition, Robert Duncan (1919-1988) was a generative force among American poets, and his poetry and poetics establish him as a major figure in mid- and late- 20th-century American letters. This second volume of Robert Duncan’s collected poetry and plays presents authoritative annotated texts of both collected and uncollected work from his middle and late writing years (1958-1988), with commentaries on each of the five books from this period: The Opening of the Field, Roots and Branches, Bending the Bow, and the two volumes of Ground Work. The biographical and critical introduction discusses Duncan as a late Romantic and postmodern American writer; his formulation of a homosexual poetics; his development of the serial poem; the notation and centrality of sound as organizing principle; his relations with such fellow poets as Robin Blaser, Charles Olson, and Jack Spicer; his indebtedness to Alfred North Whitehead; and his collaborations with the painter Jess Collins, his lifelong partner. Texts include his anti-war poems of the 1960s and 70s, his homages to Dante and other canonical poets, and his translations from the French of Gérard de Nerval, as well as the complete Structure of Rime and Passages series.

Larry Eigner (1927–1996), born with cerebral palsy, was an active and significant figure for the New American Poets of the 1950s and 1960s, particularly with the Black Mountain School. While his writing has been overshadowed by his contemporaries, such as Charles Olson and Robert Creeley, Eigner’s work has had a significant influence on generations of poets as he was at the center of the development of a postmodern poetics. The essays in this collection examine the breadth of Eigner’s interests and influence, considering issues pertaining to ecopoetics, race and ethnicity, disability, technology, media, soundscapes, phenomenology, and popular culture. This book promises to be a foundational text for Eigner studies as well as an important addition to critical work about twentieth-century poetry and poetics. Momentous Inconclusions: The Life and Work of Larry Eigner is a valuable contribution to scholars in the field and to academics researching the intersection of disability studies and poetics.