Louis Zukofsky
Encyclopedia
Louis Zukofsky was an American
poet
. He was one of the founders and the primary theorist of the Objectivist
group of poets and thus an important influence on subsequent generations of poets in America and abroad.
's Lower East Side
to Lithuania
n Jewish parents, father Pinchos (ca. 1860-1950) and mother Chana (1862–1927), both religiously orthodox
, a tradition against which Zukofsky reacted early. Pinchos immigrated to the United States in 1898, working as a pants-presser and night watchman in New York’s garment district until he could send for his wife and children in 1903.
The only one of his siblings born in America, Louis Zukofsky grew up speaking Yiddish and frequented Yiddish theatres in the Bowery
where he saw works by Shakespeare, Ibsen, Strindberg
, and Tolstoy
performed in Yiddish translations. He read Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
's The Song of Hiawatha
and Aeschylus
's Prometheus Bound
in Yiddish, too. His first real contact with English was when he started school, but, being a fast learner, he had read all of Shakespeare's works in the original by the age of eleven.
Although Zukofsky’s family was poor, and though he could have gone to the City College of New York
for free, his parents sent him to the expensive Columbia University
where he studied philosophy and English; some of his classmates were to become important figures of culture, namely Mark Van Doren
, John Dewey
, John Erskine
and Lionel Trilling
. Zukofsky graduated with a Master's degree
in 1924.
Zukofsky's MA thesis was the earliest version of his long essay "Henry Adams: A Criticism in Autobiography." Zukofsky's fascination with Henry Adams
was to persist through much of his career. Adams's late and rather recondite ideas about the progression of "phases" in history would greatly influence Zukofsky, and the form of his Adams essay, the vast majority of which is quotation from Adams's works, looks forward to Zukofsky's mature compositional methods in both criticism and poetry, where collaging of quotation lies at the heart of his writing.
Zukofsky began writing poetry at university and joined the college literary society, as well as publishing poems in student magazines like The Morningside (now Columbia Review). One early poem was published in Poetry
but never reprinted by Zukofsky. He considered Ezra Pound
the most important living poet of his youth. In 1927, he sent his poem Poem beginning "The" to him. Addressed mostly to the poet's mother, the poem was in part a parody of T. S. Eliot
's The Waste Land
. In contrast to Eliot's pessimistic view of the modern world, The suggests a bright future for Western culture, based in Zukofsky's belief in the energy the new immigrants brought to the United States and in the October Revolution
.
Pound was impressed by the poem and published it a year later in the journal Exile. Zukofsky further impressed Pound by writing the first analyses of Pound’s Cantos in 1929, when they were still unfinished. Pound then persuaded Harriet Monroe
, Chicago heiress and founder of Poetry, to allow Zukofsky to edit a special issue for her in February of 1931.
In 1934, Zukofsky got a research job with the Works Projects Administration (WPA), a position he held until 1942, working on a history of American handicrafts. In 1933, he met Celia Thaew who he married six years later. The Zukofskys had one child, Paul
(born in 1943), who went on to become a prominent violinist and conductor. In 1943, Zukofsky left the WPA to work as a substitute public school teacher and a technical writer. In 1947, he took a job as an instructor in the English Department of the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, where he taught until his retirement in 1966.
In 1972, the Zukofskys moved to Port Jefferson
, on Long Island
. When Zukofsky died there on May 12, 1978 he had published 49 books, including poetry, short fiction, and critical essays. He had won National Endowment for the Arts
Grants in 1967 and 1968, the National Institute of Arts and Letters Grants in 1976, and an honorary doctorate from Bard College
in 1977.
The difficulty of Zukofsky's later poetry alienated many critics and even some of his former friends. Zukofsky quarrelled bitterly with George Oppen
after Oppen accused Zukofsky of using obscurity as a tactic. But the 1960s and 1970s also brought Zukofsky a degree of public recognition that he had never before received. The influential scholar Hugh Kenner
became a close friend of Zukofsky and an advocate of his work. Such major poets as Robert Duncan
and Robert Creeley
testified to Zukofsky's importance as the creator of daring experimental writing.
, sponsored him for membership in the Communist Party
, though it is unclear whether he actually joined. While he associated with Party members and published in Party-associated magazines, his poetry, which while strongly political was resolutely avant-garde
and difficult, found little favor in Party circles. Though Zukofsky considered himself a Marxist at least through the end of the 1930s, the focus of his work after 1940 turned from the political to the domestic. Much later, he would claim that reading Edward Gibbon
's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire finally turned him away from Marx.
. The two poets influenced each other's work significantly, and Williams regularly sent his new work to Zukofsky for editing and improvement. Zukofsky was one of the founders of the Objectivist
group of poets and of To Publishers, later The Objectivist Press, along with Charles Reznikoff
and George Oppen. Thanks to Pound's insistence, he was able to edit an Objectivist issue of Poetry, in which he coined the very term and defined the two main characteristics of Objectivist poetry: sincerity and objectification. Other poets associated with this group included Williams, Basil Bunting
, Lorine Niedecker
, Carl Rakosi
, Charles Reznikoff
and Kenneth Rexroth
.
through sonnet
s to free verse
and the music of Bach
. Especially the sections of "A" written shortly before World War II
are political: Section 10 for example, published in 1940, is an intense and horrifying response to the fall of France.
The tone of the poem changes for good with Section 12, which is longer than the first eleven sections combined. Zukofsky introduces material from his family life and celebrates his love for his wife Celia and his son Paul. From here on "A" interweaves the political, historical and personal in more or less equal measure. The extensive use of music in this work reflects the importance of Zukofsky's collaborations with his wife and son, both professional musicians. "A" grew frequently difficult and even eccentric (section 16 is only four words long). The complete poem, 826 pages long, beginning with the word "A" and ending with "Zion
", was published in 1978.
The final lines of Autobiography express Zukofsky's fear of permanent alienation from his upbringing and tradition as a bitter triumph of successful assimilation: "Keine Kadish wird man sagen". The lines are a variation on lines from Heinrich Heine
’s poem Gedächtnisfeier (Memorial): "Keine Messe wird man singen, / Keinen Kadosch wird man sagen, / Nichts gesagt und nichts gesungen / Wird an meinen Sterbetagen". ("No Mass
will anyone sing / Neither Kaddish
will anyone say, / Nothing will be said and nothing sung / On my dying days")
s addressed to Celia. The first book publication of these shorter poems was 55 Poems (1941). Zukofsky continued to write and publish shorter poems which were eventually collected in All: The Collected Short Poems, 1923-1964 (1971).
Zukofsky also wrote critical essays, many of which were collected in Prepositions: The Collected Critical Essays of Louis Zukofsky (1968) and the book-length study Bottom: On Shakespeare (1963) which was accompanied by a second volume containing a setting by Celia Zukofsky of Shakespeare's play Pericles, Prince of Tyre
.
His prose fiction includes Ferdinand (1968) and the novel Little: For Careenagers (1970) about a youthful violin child prodigy
modelled on his son. He also wrote a play Arise, Arise (1962/1973) and, in 1969, an extraordinary set of homophonic translation
s of Catullus
that attempted to replicate the sound rather than the sense of the originals in English. For Zukofsky, translation provided occasion not for modest apprenticeship but rather for a technical tour de force.
Zukofsky's A Test of Poetry (1948) was a teaching anthology with critical commentary, after the manner of Pound's ABC of Reading
.
and Beat poets in the 1960s and 1970s. Largely responsible here was the poet and editor Cid Corman
who published Zukofsky's work and critical comments on it in his magazine Origin
and through Origin Press from the late 1950s onward. In the 1970s, Zukofsky was a major influence on many of the Language poets
, particularly in their formalism.
The Zukofsky revival continued into the twenty-first century. In 2000 Wesleyan University Press
, honoring Zukofsky's birth in 1904, began publishing The Wesleyan Centennial Edition of the Complete Critical Writings of Louis Zukofsky. Editions of "A" continue to be published and sell quickly; the Chicago Review
(Winter 2004/5) devoted an issue to Zukofsky; his correspondence with William Carlos Williams was published in 2003. In 2007, Shoemaker & Hoard published Mark Scroggins' The Poem of a Life: A Biography of Louis Zukofsky, a full-length analysis of the poet's career derived from extensive archival research and interviews with Zukofsky's friends, acquaintances, and family members.
In 2009, Louis Zukofsky's son Paul Zukofsky
, the owner of Zukofsky's copyrights, wrote an open letter telling graduate students and scholars that "In general, as a matter of principle, and for your own well-being, I urge you to not work on Louis Zukofsky, and prefer that you do not."
In the letter, Paul Zukofsky required that graduate students ask him for permission to quote from his father's works in their dissertations (an unusual practice), and made it clear that he might withhold such permission. Quoting from e. e. cummings
(presumably without permission), he indicated that he believed that scholars write chiefly from self-interest and that their claims that their scholarship would help enhance Louis Zukofsky's artistic legacy were offensive:
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
. He was one of the founders and the primary theorist of the Objectivist
Objectivist poets
The Objectivist poets were a loose-knit group of second-generation Modernists who emerged in the 1930s. They were mainly American and were influenced by, amongst others, Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams...
group of poets and thus an important influence on subsequent generations of poets in America and abroad.
Life
Zukofsky was born in New YorkNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
's Lower East Side
Lower East Side
The Lower East Side, LES, is a neighborhood in the southeastern part of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is roughly bounded by Allen Street, East Houston Street, Essex Street, Canal Street, Eldridge Street, East Broadway, and Grand Street....
to Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
n Jewish parents, father Pinchos (ca. 1860-1950) and mother Chana (1862–1927), both religiously orthodox
Orthodox Judaism
Orthodox Judaism , is the approach to Judaism which adheres to the traditional interpretation and application of the laws and ethics of the Torah as legislated in the Talmudic texts by the Sanhedrin and subsequently developed and applied by the later authorities known as the Gaonim, Rishonim, and...
, a tradition against which Zukofsky reacted early. Pinchos immigrated to the United States in 1898, working as a pants-presser and night watchman in New York’s garment district until he could send for his wife and children in 1903.
The only one of his siblings born in America, Louis Zukofsky grew up speaking Yiddish and frequented Yiddish theatres in the Bowery
Bowery, Manhattan
Bowery , commonly called "the Bowery," is a street and a small neighborhood in the southern portion of the New York City borough of Manhattan...
where he saw works by Shakespeare, Ibsen, Strindberg
Strindberg
Strindberg may refer to:People* August Strindberg , Swedish dramatist and painter* Nils Strindberg , Swedish photographer* Anita Strindberg , Swedish actor* Henrik Strindberg , Swedish composerOther...
, and Tolstoy
Tolstoy
Tolstoy, or Tolstoi is a prominent family of Russian nobility, descending from Andrey Kharitonovich Tolstoy who served under Vasily II of Moscow...
performed in Yiddish translations. He read Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline...
's The Song of Hiawatha
The Song of Hiawatha
The Song of Hiawatha is an 1855 epic poem, in trochaic tetrameter, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, featuring an Indian hero and loosely based on legends and ethnography of the Ojibwe and other Native American peoples contained in Algic Researches and additional writings of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft...
and Aeschylus
Aeschylus
Aeschylus was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived, the others being Sophocles and Euripides, and is often described as the father of tragedy. His name derives from the Greek word aiskhos , meaning "shame"...
's Prometheus Bound
Prometheus Bound
Prometheus Bound is an Ancient Greek tragedy. In Antiquity, this drama was attributed to Aeschylus, but is now considered by some scholars to be the work of another hand, perhaps one as late as ca. 415 BC. Despite these doubts of authorship, the play's designation as Aeschylean has remained...
in Yiddish, too. His first real contact with English was when he started school, but, being a fast learner, he had read all of Shakespeare's works in the original by the age of eleven.
Although Zukofsky’s family was poor, and though he could have gone to the City College of New York
City College of New York
The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...
for free, his parents sent him to the expensive Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
where he studied philosophy and English; some of his classmates were to become important figures of culture, namely Mark Van Doren
Mark Van Doren
Mark Van Doren was an American poet, writer and a critic, apart from being a scholar and a professor of English at Columbia University for nearly 40 years, where he inspired a generation of influential writers and thinkers including Thomas Merton, Robert Lax, John Berryman, and Beat Generation...
, John Dewey
John Dewey
John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey was an important early developer of the philosophy of pragmatism and one of the founders of functional psychology...
, John Erskine
John Erskine (educator)
John Erskine was a U.S. educator and author, born in New York City and raised in Weehawken, New Jersey. He graduated from Columbia University ....
and Lionel Trilling
Lionel Trilling
Lionel Trilling was an American literary critic, author, and teacher. With wife Diana Trilling, he was a member of the New York Intellectuals and contributor to the Partisan Review. Although he did not establish a school of literary criticism, he is one of the leading U.S...
. Zukofsky graduated with a Master's degree
Master's degree
A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...
in 1924.
Zukofsky's MA thesis was the earliest version of his long essay "Henry Adams: A Criticism in Autobiography." Zukofsky's fascination with Henry Adams
Henry Adams
Henry Brooks Adams was an American journalist, historian, academic and novelist. He is best known for his autobiographical book, The Education of Henry Adams. He was a member of the Adams political family.- Early life :He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Charles Francis Adams Sr...
was to persist through much of his career. Adams's late and rather recondite ideas about the progression of "phases" in history would greatly influence Zukofsky, and the form of his Adams essay, the vast majority of which is quotation from Adams's works, looks forward to Zukofsky's mature compositional methods in both criticism and poetry, where collaging of quotation lies at the heart of his writing.
Zukofsky began writing poetry at university and joined the college literary society, as well as publishing poems in student magazines like The Morningside (now Columbia Review). One early poem was published in Poetry
Poetry (magazine)
Poetry , published in Chicago, Illinois since 1912, is one of the leading monthly poetry journals in the English-speaking world. Published by the Poetry Foundation and currently edited by Christian Wiman, the magazine has a circulation of 30,000 and prints 300 poems per year out of approximately...
but never reprinted by Zukofsky. He considered Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
the most important living poet of his youth. In 1927, he sent his poem Poem beginning "The" to him. Addressed mostly to the poet's mother, the poem was in part a parody of T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
's The Waste Land
The Waste Land
The Waste Land[A] is a 434-line[B] modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922. It has been called "one of the most important poems of the 20th century." Despite the poem's obscurity—its shifts between satire and prophecy, its abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location and time, its...
. In contrast to Eliot's pessimistic view of the modern world, The suggests a bright future for Western culture, based in Zukofsky's belief in the energy the new immigrants brought to the United States and in the October Revolution
October Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
.
Pound was impressed by the poem and published it a year later in the journal Exile. Zukofsky further impressed Pound by writing the first analyses of Pound’s Cantos in 1929, when they were still unfinished. Pound then persuaded Harriet Monroe
Harriet Monroe
Harriet Monroe was an American editor, scholar, literary critic, poet and patron of the arts. She is best known as the founding publisher and long-time editor of Poetry Magazine, which made its debut in 1912. As a supporter of the poets Ezra Pound, H. D., T. S...
, Chicago heiress and founder of Poetry, to allow Zukofsky to edit a special issue for her in February of 1931.
In 1934, Zukofsky got a research job with the Works Projects Administration (WPA), a position he held until 1942, working on a history of American handicrafts. In 1933, he met Celia Thaew who he married six years later. The Zukofskys had one child, Paul
Paul Zukofsky
Paul Zukofsky is an American violinist and conductor known for his work in the field of contemporary classical music.-Career:...
(born in 1943), who went on to become a prominent violinist and conductor. In 1943, Zukofsky left the WPA to work as a substitute public school teacher and a technical writer. In 1947, he took a job as an instructor in the English Department of the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, where he taught until his retirement in 1966.
In 1972, the Zukofskys moved to Port Jefferson
Port Jefferson, New York
The Incorporated Village of Port Jefferson is located in the town of Brookhaven in Suffolk County, New York on the North Shore of Long Island. As of the 2000 United States Census, the village population was 7,837...
, on Long Island
Long Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
. When Zukofsky died there on May 12, 1978 he had published 49 books, including poetry, short fiction, and critical essays. He had won National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
Grants in 1967 and 1968, the National Institute of Arts and Letters Grants in 1976, and an honorary doctorate from Bard College
Bard College
Bard College, founded in 1860 as "St. Stephen's College", is a small four-year liberal arts college located in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.-Location:...
in 1977.
The difficulty of Zukofsky's later poetry alienated many critics and even some of his former friends. Zukofsky quarrelled bitterly with George Oppen
George Oppen
George Oppen was an American poet, best known as one of the members of the Objectivist group of poets. He abandoned poetry in the 1930s for political activism, and later moved to Mexico to avoid the attentions of the House Un-American Activities Committee...
after Oppen accused Zukofsky of using obscurity as a tactic. But the 1960s and 1970s also brought Zukofsky a degree of public recognition that he had never before received. The influential scholar Hugh Kenner
Hugh Kenner
William Hugh Kenner , was a Canadian literary scholar, critic and professor.Kenner was born in Peterborough, Ontario on January 7, 1923; his father taught classics...
became a close friend of Zukofsky and an advocate of his work. Such major poets as Robert Duncan
Robert Duncan (poet)
Robert Duncan was an American poet and a student of H.D. and the Western esoteric tradition who spent most of his career in and around San Francisco. Though associated with any number of literary traditions and schools, Duncan is often identified with the poets of the New American Poetry and Black...
and Robert Creeley
Robert Creeley
Robert Creeley was an American poet and author of more than sixty books. He is usually associated with the Black Mountain poets, though his verse aesthetic diverged from that school's. He was close with Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, John Wieners and Ed Dorn. He served as the Samuel P...
testified to Zukofsky's importance as the creator of daring experimental writing.
Politics
In his early years, Zukofsky was a committed Marxist. While studying at Columbia, his friend, Whittaker ChambersWhittaker Chambers
Whittaker Chambers was born Jay Vivian Chambers and also known as David Whittaker Chambers , was an American writer and editor. After being a Communist Party USA member and Soviet spy, he later renounced communism and became an outspoken opponent later testifying in the perjury and espionage trial...
, sponsored him for membership in the Communist Party
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
, though it is unclear whether he actually joined. While he associated with Party members and published in Party-associated magazines, his poetry, which while strongly political was resolutely avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
and difficult, found little favor in Party circles. Though Zukofsky considered himself a Marxist at least through the end of the 1930s, the focus of his work after 1940 turned from the political to the domestic. Much later, he would claim that reading Edward Gibbon
Edward Gibbon
Edward Gibbon was an English historian and Member of Parliament...
's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire finally turned him away from Marx.
Objectivism
Pound was impressed by Zukofsky's Poem beginning "The" and promoted his work, putting him in contact with other like-minded poets, including William Carlos WilliamsWilliam Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine, having graduated from the University of Pennsylvania...
. The two poets influenced each other's work significantly, and Williams regularly sent his new work to Zukofsky for editing and improvement. Zukofsky was one of the founders of the Objectivist
Objectivist poets
The Objectivist poets were a loose-knit group of second-generation Modernists who emerged in the 1930s. They were mainly American and were influenced by, amongst others, Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams...
group of poets and of To Publishers, later The Objectivist Press, along with Charles Reznikoff
Charles Reznikoff
Charles Reznikoff was the poet for whom the term Objectivist was first coined. When asked by Harriet Munroe to provide an introduction to what became known as the Objectivist issue of Poetry, Louis Zukofsky provided his essay Sincerity and Objectification: With Special Reference to the Work of...
and George Oppen. Thanks to Pound's insistence, he was able to edit an Objectivist issue of Poetry, in which he coined the very term and defined the two main characteristics of Objectivist poetry: sincerity and objectification. Other poets associated with this group included Williams, Basil Bunting
Basil Bunting
Basil Cheesman Bunting was a significant British modernist poet whose reputation was established with the publication of Briggflatts in 1966. He had a lifelong interest in music that led him to emphasise the sonic qualities of poetry, particularly the importance of reading poetry aloud...
, Lorine Niedecker
Lorine Niedecker
Lorine Faith Niedecker was a Wisconsin poet and the only woman associated with the Objectivist poets...
, Carl Rakosi
Carl Rakosi
Carl Rakosi was the last surviving member of the original group of poets who were given the rubric Objectivist. He was still publishing and performing his poetry well into his 90s.-Early life:...
, Charles Reznikoff
Charles Reznikoff
Charles Reznikoff was the poet for whom the term Objectivist was first coined. When asked by Harriet Munroe to provide an introduction to what became known as the Objectivist issue of Poetry, Louis Zukofsky provided his essay Sincerity and Objectification: With Special Reference to the Work of...
and Kenneth Rexroth
Kenneth Rexroth
Kenneth Rexroth was an American poet, translator and critical essayist. He is regarded as a central figure in the San Francisco Renaissance, and paved the groundwork for the movement...
.
"A"
Zukofsky's major work was the long poem "A" - he never referred to it without the quotation marks - which he began in 1927 and was to work on for the rest of his life, albeit with an eight-year hiatus between 1940 and 1948. The poem was divided into 24 sections, reflecting the hours of the day. The first eleven sections contain a lot of overtly political passages but interweave them with formal concerns and models that range from medieval Italian canzoneCanzone
Literally "song" in Italian, a canzone is an Italian or Provençal song or ballad. It is also used to describe a type of lyric which resembles a madrigal...
through sonnet
Sonnet
A sonnet is one of several forms of poetry that originate in Europe, mainly Provence and Italy. A sonnet commonly has 14 lines. The term "sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning "little song" or "little sound"...
s to free verse
Free verse
Free verse is a form of poetry that refrains from consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any other musical pattern.Poets have explained that free verse, despite its freedom, is not free. Free Verse displays some elements of form...
and the music of Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
. Especially the sections of "A" written shortly before World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
are political: Section 10 for example, published in 1940, is an intense and horrifying response to the fall of France.
The tone of the poem changes for good with Section 12, which is longer than the first eleven sections combined. Zukofsky introduces material from his family life and celebrates his love for his wife Celia and his son Paul. From here on "A" interweaves the political, historical and personal in more or less equal measure. The extensive use of music in this work reflects the importance of Zukofsky's collaborations with his wife and son, both professional musicians. "A" grew frequently difficult and even eccentric (section 16 is only four words long). The complete poem, 826 pages long, beginning with the word "A" and ending with "Zion
Zion
Zion is a place name often used as a synonym for Jerusalem. The word is first found in Samuel II, 5:7 dating to c.630-540 BCE...
", was published in 1978.
The problem of assimilation
A theme that was especially close to Zukofsky's own heart as the child of immigrants, was the problem of assimilation, both cultural and poetical. In his poem Poem beginning ‘The’, Zukofsky refers to the Yiddish-American poet Yehoash (Solomon Bloomgarden). The poem raises the problem of the educated, socialist and atheist poet losing connection with his religious familial culture. This theme also appears in the poet's poignant address to his mother in the fifth movement of the poem Autobiography:
If horses but could sing Bach, mother, – / Remember how I wished it once – / Now I kiss you who could never sing Bach, never read Shakespeare.
The final lines of Autobiography express Zukofsky's fear of permanent alienation from his upbringing and tradition as a bitter triumph of successful assimilation: "Keine Kadish wird man sagen". The lines are a variation on lines from Heinrich Heine
Heinrich Heine
Christian Johann Heinrich Heine was one of the most significant German poets of the 19th century. He was also a journalist, essayist, and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of Lieder by composers such as Robert Schumann...
’s poem Gedächtnisfeier (Memorial): "Keine Messe wird man singen, / Keinen Kadosch wird man sagen, / Nichts gesagt und nichts gesungen / Wird an meinen Sterbetagen". ("No Mass
Mass (liturgy)
"Mass" is one of the names by which the sacrament of the Eucharist is called in the Roman Catholic Church: others are "Eucharist", the "Lord's Supper", the "Breaking of Bread", the "Eucharistic assembly ", the "memorial of the Lord's Passion and Resurrection", the "Holy Sacrifice", the "Holy and...
will anyone sing / Neither Kaddish
Kaddish
Kaddish is a prayer found in the Jewish prayer service. The central theme of the Kaddish is the magnification and sanctification of God's name. In the liturgy different versions of the Kaddish are used functionally as separators between sections of the service...
will anyone say, / Nothing will be said and nothing sung / On my dying days")
Shorter poems, translations, and other writings
In tandem with "A", Zukofsky continued writing shorter poems throughout his life. Many of these shared the political and formal concerns of the longer poem, but they also include more personal lyrics, including a series of ValentineValentine's Day
Saint Valentine's Day, commonly shortened to Valentine's Day, is an annual commemoration held on February 14 celebrating love and affection between intimate companions. The day is named after one or more early Christian martyrs named Saint Valentine, and was established by Pope Gelasius I in 496...
s addressed to Celia. The first book publication of these shorter poems was 55 Poems (1941). Zukofsky continued to write and publish shorter poems which were eventually collected in All: The Collected Short Poems, 1923-1964 (1971).
Zukofsky also wrote critical essays, many of which were collected in Prepositions: The Collected Critical Essays of Louis Zukofsky (1968) and the book-length study Bottom: On Shakespeare (1963) which was accompanied by a second volume containing a setting by Celia Zukofsky of Shakespeare's play Pericles, Prince of Tyre
Pericles, Prince of Tyre
Pericles, Prince of Tyre is a Jacobean play written at least in part by William Shakespeare and included in modern editions of his collected works despite questions over its authorship, as it was not included in the First Folio...
.
His prose fiction includes Ferdinand (1968) and the novel Little: For Careenagers (1970) about a youthful violin child prodigy
Child prodigy
A child prodigy is someone who, at an early age, masters one or more skills far beyond his or her level of maturity. One criterion for classifying prodigies is: a prodigy is a child, typically younger than 18 years old, who is performing at the level of a highly trained adult in a very demanding...
modelled on his son. He also wrote a play Arise, Arise (1962/1973) and, in 1969, an extraordinary set of homophonic translation
Homophonic translation
Homophonic translation renders a text in one language into a near-homophonic text in another language, usually with no attempt to preserve the original meaning of the text. In one homophonic translation, for example, English "sat on a wall" is rendered as French "s'étonne aux Halles" 'is...
s of Catullus
Catullus
Gaius Valerius Catullus was a Latin poet of the Republican period. His surviving works are still read widely, and continue to influence poetry and other forms of art.-Biography:...
that attempted to replicate the sound rather than the sense of the originals in English. For Zukofsky, translation provided occasion not for modest apprenticeship but rather for a technical tour de force.
Zukofsky's A Test of Poetry (1948) was a teaching anthology with critical commentary, after the manner of Pound's ABC of Reading
ABC of Reading
ABC of Reading is a book by Ezra Pound published in 1934. In it, Pound sets out an approach to the appreciation and understanding of literature ....
.
Legacy
Despite the attention Objectivism received as a major poetic movement of the 1930s, Zukofsky’s own work never achieved much recognition outside literary circles since his poetry was seen as obscure, too experimental, and dryly intellectual. Zukofsky, along with the other Objectivists, was rediscovered by the Black MountainBlack Mountain poets
The Black Mountain poets, sometimes called projectivist poets, were a group of mid 20th century American avant-garde or postmodern poets centered on Black Mountain College.-Background:...
and Beat poets in the 1960s and 1970s. Largely responsible here was the poet and editor Cid Corman
Cid Corman
Cid Corman was an American poet, translator and editor, most notably of Origin, who was a key figure in the history of American poetry in the second half of the 20th century.-Early life and writing:...
who published Zukofsky's work and critical comments on it in his magazine Origin
Origin (magazine)
Origin magazine, is an American poetry magazine that was founded in 1951 by Cid Corman. The magazine provided an early platform for the work of Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Gary Snyder, Theodore Enslin and other important, ground-breaking poets, who collectively created an alternative to academic...
and through Origin Press from the late 1950s onward. In the 1970s, Zukofsky was a major influence on many of the Language poets
Language poets
The Language poets are an avant garde group or tendency in United States poetry that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s...
, particularly in their formalism.
The Zukofsky revival continued into the twenty-first century. In 2000 Wesleyan University Press
Wesleyan University Press
Wesleyan University Press is a university press that is part of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. The Press is currently directed by Suzanna Tamminen, a published poet and essayist...
, honoring Zukofsky's birth in 1904, began publishing The Wesleyan Centennial Edition of the Complete Critical Writings of Louis Zukofsky. Editions of "A" continue to be published and sell quickly; the Chicago Review
Chicago Review
The Chicago Review is a literary magazine published four times per year in the Humanities Division at the University of Chicago. It was founded in 1946. Three stories published in the Chicago Review have won the O. Henry Prize...
(Winter 2004/5) devoted an issue to Zukofsky; his correspondence with William Carlos Williams was published in 2003. In 2007, Shoemaker & Hoard published Mark Scroggins' The Poem of a Life: A Biography of Louis Zukofsky, a full-length analysis of the poet's career derived from extensive archival research and interviews with Zukofsky's friends, acquaintances, and family members.
In 2009, Louis Zukofsky's son Paul Zukofsky
Paul Zukofsky
Paul Zukofsky is an American violinist and conductor known for his work in the field of contemporary classical music.-Career:...
, the owner of Zukofsky's copyrights, wrote an open letter telling graduate students and scholars that "In general, as a matter of principle, and for your own well-being, I urge you to not work on Louis Zukofsky, and prefer that you do not."
In the letter, Paul Zukofsky required that graduate students ask him for permission to quote from his father's works in their dissertations (an unusual practice), and made it clear that he might withhold such permission. Quoting from e. e. cummings
E. E. Cummings
Edward Estlin Cummings , popularly known as E. E. Cummings, with the abbreviated form of his name often written by others in lowercase letters as e.e. cummings , was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright...
(presumably without permission), he indicated that he believed that scholars write chiefly from self-interest and that their claims that their scholarship would help enhance Louis Zukofsky's artistic legacy were offensive:
I can perhaps understand your misguided interest in literature, music, art, etc. I would be suspicious of your interest in Louis Zukofsky, but might eventually accept it. I can applaud your desire to obtain a job, any job, although why in your chosen so-called profession is quite beyond me; but one line you may not cross i.e. never never ever tell me that your work is to be valued by me because it promotes my father. Doing that will earn my life-long permanent enmity. Your self-interest(s) I may understand, perhaps even agree with; but beyond that, in the words of e.e.cummings quoting Olaf: “there is some s I will not eat”.Paul Zukofsky wrote in the letter that his chief concern was to derive income from his possession of copyrights in his father's work, not to censor what might be said, but it might well be the case that the unusual difficulty and expense of writing about Louis Zukofsky will affect the poet's legacy.
Poetry, prose, plays
- The Writing of Guillaume Apollinaire/Le Style Apollinaire (1934), with René TaupinRené TaupinRené Taupin was a French translator, critic, and academic. He moved to the United States in the 1920s. In 1954, he was appointed chairman of the Department of Romance Languages at Hunter College...
, Sasha Watson, Jean DaiveJean DaiveJean Daive is a poet and translator. He is the author of novels, collections of poetry and has translated work by Paul Celan and Robert Creeley among others....
and Serge GavronskySerge Gavronsky-Life:He fled Hitler in 1941. He graduated from Columbia University, and is now professor and chair of the French department at Barnard College. He lives in New York City.-Poetry:* Lectures et compte-rendu, poèmes. Coll...
, Univ Pr of New England, ISBN 0-8195-6620-9 - First Half of "A" 9 (privately printed, 1940)
- 55 Poems (1941)
- Anew (1946)
- Some Time: Short Poems (1956)
- Statements for Poetry (1958)
- Barely & Widely (1958)
- It Was (1959)
- "A" 1-12 (1959, 2nd edition 1966 (UK), 1967 (US))
- Louis Zukofsky: 16 Once Published (1962)
- Arise, Arise (1962/1973)
- Bottom: On Shakespeare two volumes (Volume 2 is Celia Zukofsky's musical setting of Shakespeare's play Pericles) (1963)
- I's (Pronounced Eyes) (1963)
- Found Objects: 1962-1926 (1964)
- After I's (1964)
- Finally a Valentine: A Poem (1965)
- I Sent Thee Late (1965)
- Iyyob (1965)
- Little: An Unearthing (1965)
- All: The Collected Short Poems,1923-1958 (1965)
- All: The Collected Short Poems,1956-1964 (1966)
- "A" 14 (1967)
- Fragment for Careenagers (1967)
- Ferdinand, Including "It Was" (1968)
- "A" 13-21 (1969)
- Catullus Fragmenta (with music by Celia Zukofsky) (1968)
- Prepositions: The Collected Critical Essays of Louis Zukofsky (1968)
- Catullus (1969)
- The Gas Age (1969)
- Autobiography (poems set to music by Celia Zukofsky) (1970)
- Little: For Careenagers (1970)
- Initial (1970)
- All: The Collected Short Poems, 1923-1964 (1971)
- "A" 24 (1972)
- "A" 22 & 23 (1975)
- 80 Flowers (1978)
- "A" (1978)
- Selected Letters of Ezra Pound and Louis Zukofsky (edited by Barry Ahearn) (1987)
- Collected Fiction (1990)
- Complete Short Poetry (1991)
- Selected Poems (edited by Charles BernsteinCharles BernsteinCharles Bernstein is an American poet, theorist, editor, and literary scholar. Bernstein holds the Donald T. Regan Chair in the Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania. He is one of the most prominent members of the Language poets . In 2006 he was elected a Fellow of the American...
) (2006)
Centennial Edition of the Complete Critical Writings
- A Test of Poetry (Foreword by Robert Creeley) Complete Critical Writings-Vol.I (Wesleyan University Press, 2000)
- Prepositions+: The Collected Critical Essays (Foreword by Charles Bernstein; Additional Prose edited & introduced by Mark Scroggins) Complete Critical Writings-Vol.II (Wesleyan University Press, 2001)
- Bottom: On Shakespeare (with Celia Thaew Zukofsky) Complete Critical Writings-Vol.III & IV (Wesleyan University Press, 2003)
- A Useful Art: Essays and Radio Scripts on American Design (Edited with an introduction by Kenneth Sherwood; afterword by John TaggartJohn TaggartJohn Taggart is an American poet and critic. He was born in Guthrie Center, Iowa. He graduated with honors in 1965 from Earlham College in Indiana, earning a B.A. in English Literature and Philosophy. In 1966 he received a M.A. in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of...
Complete Critical Writings-Vol.VI (Wesleyan University Press, 2003) - Le Style Apollinaire:The Writing of Guillaume Apollinaire(Edited with introduction by Serge Gavronsky; foreword by Jean Daive) Complete Critical Writings-Vol.V, bilingual edition (Wesleyan University Press, 2004)
Letters and correspondence
- Pound/Zukofsky: Selected Letters of Ezra Pound and Louis Zukofsky (edited by Barry Ahearn) (Faber & Faber, 1987)
- Niedecker and the Correspondence with Zukofsky 1931-1970 (edited by Jenny Penberthy) (Cambridge University Press, 1993)
- The Correspondence of William Carlos Williams & Louis Zukofsky (edited by Barry Ahearn) (Wesleyan University Press, 2003)
As editor
- An 'Objectivists' Anthology (1932, together with Var Le Beausset)
- Test of Poetry (1948/1964)
Further reading
- Perelman, BobBob PerelmanBob Perelman is an American poet, critic, editor and teacher. He is often associated with the Language School group of poets. Perelman is Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania.-Life and work:...
. The Trouble with Genius: Reading Pound, Joyce, Stein, and Zukofsky, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1994. - Louis Zukofsky Papers at the University Archives at Kansas State UniversityKansas State UniversityKansas State University, commonly shortened to K-State, is an institution of higher learning located in Manhattan, Kansas, in the United States...
. - Scroggins, Mark. Louis Zukofsky and the Poetry of Knowledge, University of Alabama Press, 1998.
- Scroggins, Mark (editor). Upper Limit Music: The Writing of Louis Zukofsky, University of Alabama Press, 1997.
- Scroggins, Mark. The Poem of a Life: A Biography of Louis Zukofsky, Shoemaker & Hoard, 2007.
External links
- American Poets Project page referencing Louis Zukofsky: Selected Poems (2006) edited by Charles Bernstein