Book excerpt: This book examines three historical phases of the poet Robert Duncan's writing within the aesthetic and philosophical context of a pragmatist sublime. The author traces Duncan's poetics of process - which like process philosophy is predicated on conditions of change and plenitude - to the pragmatist tradition of William James, John Dewey, and Alfred North Whitehead. Working from this theoretical framework, and using the archival resources of the Robert Duncan Collection housed in the University of Buffalo's Poetry Collection, James Maynard examines Duncan's understanding of excess in relation to poetry.