In Bending the Bow, Robert Duncan is writing on a scale which places him among the poets, after Walt Whitman, bold enough to attempt the personal epic, the large-canvas rendering of man's spirit in history as one man sees it, feels it, lives it, and makes it his own.

Bertholf's selections are so attuned to the essentials of Duncan's writing that even those familiar with the whole body of Duncan's work will become more sensitized to his recurring imagery and consistency of thought pattern throughout this collection. --Publishers Weekly.

Roots and Branches, Robert Duncan's second major book of poetry (first published in 1964) is now reissued.

A young Jewish rebel is filled with hatred for the Romans and a desire to avenge his parents' deaths until Jesus of Nazareth teaches him love and understanding of others. A Newbery Medal book.

"A bent stick and a string- for 20,000 years there has come from it a fascination that remains to this day. Archery in it's original form, with a simple device, without special features, has been finding more and more participants for some years and the art of bow building has also been rediscovered."--Front insert.

The book includes short lyric poems, a recurring sequence of prose poems called The Structure of Rime, and a long poem called Poem Beginning with a Line by Pindar.