The subtlety [of Duncan's 'Strawberries Under The Snow', in his The First Decade,] is in the tempo, which quickens then slows then quickens again; and it is in the repetition of words and phrases, a shutting movement that creates lingering effects as the ear hears again in a new phrasing what it had heard shortly before. All is precise yet almost dreamy, accurate yet enchanted…. Duncan is [near] the visual directness Blake achieves when, 'On a cloud I saw a child', or the equally direct speech of Yeats, 'Come away Oh human child/To the waters and the wild', instances in which highly sophisticated adult minds move into perfect balance with beautifully unsophisticated childhood. In 'Strawberries Under The Snow' Duncan achieves such balance. But his poem is very different from Blake or Yeats because his language is different, in a modern mode. (pp. 71-2)

As his life in poetry unfolds he assimilates innovations of all the important Modernists…. Duncan's poetry testifies to a constantly growing and deepening belief, derived most directly from Ezra Pound, in the supreme importance, the reality of language. Language as he understands it is at once the raw material and the natural habitat of poetry, a kind of universe that is subject to the same laws and opportunities as the human, natural and supernatural worlds.

He for instance often denies that he is a poet at all, but not from modesty. The more completely he can relinquish merely personal claims the more fully he can enter into offices of the language. Hence his view of Walt Whitman as 'the president of regulation', the chief officer of the language rather than the chief poet of America. (p. 72)

Now a chief value of The First Decade and Derivations is as history, a record of how Duncan's increasingly full and passionate devotion to language occurs. The First Decade shows his progress from early poems through to the first decisive demonstration of his powers, in 'Medieval Scenes' (1947) and in his major work of that period, 'The Venice Poem' (1948). The overall form of this 26-page poem is musical, four movements. Occasional strains from TS Eliot enter, but Duncan's melodic sense is essentially improvisational, subtler than the impressive but conventional, even constricted, music of 'Four Quartets'. The more direct influence is Pound, whose instructions to younger poets, circa 1948, are included verbatim…. For Duncan these are imperatives, orders from the boss, that will inform all of his subsequent poetry just as they inform 'The Venice Poem'. Which is ingrained with that assurance of the artist who knows what he is doing … and how to do it…. For him, the idea of mastering the language is not so much abhorrent as ridiculous, as though a swimmer were to assume that the movements of his arms and legs were controlling the motions of the sea.

So he turns from what he has learned and for the next six years in Derivations, 1950–1956, goes back to a school of his own contriving and writes curious mirror-exercises in which the writing and the writer gaze at one another in surprise, not sure at times which is which…. [The] culminating work of the period, Letters, [is] a suite of 36 poems, some in prose form, that are exercises, variations, improvisations, instructions, meditations, devotions.

In one sense Letters is an ABC of Modern Poetry, Duncan's attempts to demonstrate the realities of language—'The vowels are physical corridors of the imagination … the consonants … confine the spirit to articulations of space and time.' D. H. Lawrence speaks of 'the Flesh made Word'. Duncan subtilizes this to both flesh and spirit, seeing the vowels and consonants as literal vehicles for the incarnation, the bodying forth. In another sense Letters is a homage as the artist composes variations on great themes introduced by Blake, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Pound, poets who stand as fathers or architects of the language, men who have realized its eternal moods. For Duncan there is rapture in this realization. In still another sense Letters brings Duncan's daily life and friendships of the period into the language place or process. But primarily the poems convey devotion, an achieved communion with vowel, consonant, syllable, word, line, sentence, with their inner life…. (pp. 72-3)

In The First Decade and Derivations, then, one begins to see two complementary phases in Duncan's growth as poet. First, a plunging in (circa 1940) in which he is all-at-sea in midst of the works and days of other poets. And from the midst of them a gathering of his own forces that carries like an incoming tide to a culmination in 'The Venice Poem' (1948). Second, a deliberate return to being all-at-sea (circa 1950) in the midst now of the works and days of language herself—Mother Tongue. And out of this effort another gathering of his forces, a new tide that culminates in Letters (1956). Letters, however, differs from 'The Venice Poem' because it is not a waystation but an arrival at realization that for him language is the eternal mode. Beyond 1956 the going back to at-sea continues…. But it is in Letters that he takes his stand with the language. Which is perhaps why his efforts within recent years reveal stronger affinity with the old masters who are for him the fathers, the eternal ones. Particularly Dante, who crossed on over into the vulgate of his time just as Duncan has crossed over into a new vulgate, the idiom of our time. And saw Beatrice….

The burden of Letters is love found, friendships discovered, language celebrated. Having denied himself mastery of the language this chief modern poet-of-the-language achieves mastery. Not of the language, which outreaches us all. But of the devotion. It is because the beginnings of this story are in The First Decade and Derivations that they are such important books. (p. 74)