American poet Robert Duncan was BOTD in 1919. Born in Oakland, California, he studied at Berkeley where he began to write poetry, and befriended Pauline Kael. After attending Black Mountain College, he moved to a commune in Woodstock, New York, where he worked for literary magazine The Phoenix and befriended Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin. In 1941, he declared his homosexuality to get discharged from military service. After a brief marriage, he had a relationship with painter Robert de Niro Snr, the former husband of his college friend Virginia Admiral. In 1944, Duncan wrote the essay The Homosexual in Society, published in the journal politics. Comparing the plight of homosexuals in American society with that of African-Americans and Jews, it is now considered a landmark in the burgeoning gay rights movement, predating movements like the Mattachine Society by a decade. Duncan returned to California in 1945, becoming a central figure in the San Francisco literary Renaissance. His 1960s poetry collections The Opening of the Field, Roots and Branches and Bending the Bow became highly influential on Beat Generation writers Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, notably the poem Often I am permitted to return to a meadow. Duncan was in a relationship with the artist Jess Collins for nearly 40 years. He died in 1988, aged 69.