Celebrating Pride Month: Robert Duncan, out gay poet

Robert Edward Duncan, born January 7, 1919 in Oakland, California, is a noted openly gay poet, one of the first to acknowledge his homosexuality.  As a sophomore at the University of California at Berkeley in 1938, he began a relationship with grad student Ned Fahs. It ended when Fahs married a woman in 1941, but Duncan continued to write poetry about Fahs for another twenty years. 

He was drafted in 1941 but declared his homosexuality to get discharged.   In 1944. he had a relationship with abstract expressionist painter, Robert De Niro, Sr., father of actor Robert De Niro. Also, in 1944, he wrote an essay "The Homosexual in Society" where he compared the plight of gays with that of African Americans and Jews. It is considered to be a pioneering treatise on the experience of gays in American society.  

Duncan returned to the San Francisco area after WWII, and in 1950, he met artist Jess Collins.  In January 1951, they took marriage vows and moved in together.  They remained together until Duncan passed away 37 years later in February 1988.