Such Conjunctions: Robert Duncan, Jess, and Alberto de Lacerda

After meeting in November 1969 at the International Festival of Poetry in Austin, Texas, the Portuguese poet Alberto de Lacerda (1928-2007) developed a trans-Atlantic friendship with the San Francisco poet Robert Duncan (1919-1988) and his partner, the artist Jess (1923-2004). This book celebrates that friendship by bringing together from the Duncan and de Lacerda archives reproductions and transcriptions of all their extant correspondence in addition to the many inscribed publications, books, magazines, photographs, poems, drawings, and artwork that they shared with each other. Together, these items document not only the story of the relationship between these three men, including their subsequent visits together in San Francisco, Boston, and London, but also many of the significant events in each figure’s life during the years 1969 to 1989. Edited by Mary Porter de Sousa and Luís Amorim de Sousa, de Lacerda’s longtime friend and literary executor, and James Maynard, Associate Curator of the University at Buffalo’s Poetry Collection, which houses Duncan’s papers, this collection features essays by de Sousa, Maynard, and Scott Laughlin, a former student of de Lacerda’s.