"[2] Harry Duncan was born in Keokuk, Iowa and earned a bachelor's degree in English in 1938 from Grinnell College intending to become a poet.
He enrolled in the English graduate program at Duke University, but never completed his master's degree.
While in Massachusetts he began publishing books of contemporary poetry using a hand press.
He retired from teaching in 1985 and returned to printing books full-time under the Cummington Press imprint.
[1] Marking the centenary of his birth, the Fall 2016 issue of Parenthesis included a portrait of Harry Duncan on its cover along with three articles by or about Duncan: the text of his talk "New England Novitiate," "An Apprentice's Story" by Juan Nicanor Pascoe, and "A Checklist of Printed Work, 1939-1997" by Michael Peich and Denise Brady.