Zukofsky

Odds are you never heard of Louis Zukofsky, and the odds are you never will, which is strange. Assuredly, the poets that you like, or liked growing up anyway, read him, studied him, absorbed him, and probably emulated him at some point or another. On content alone, to say nothing of experimental methods and modes, he should be honored and revered. He is not. In fact he is hardly known at all. Who has recommended him to you lately? An integral part of the modernist movement in America, he has become a footnote. How many poets actually attended Ezuversity in Rapallo?

Part of the reason for the obscurity may be that his estate maintains strict control over the rights to his work. He is not as freely accessible as most poets. This may work to his advantage at some point in the future…. Another reason for the obscurity of his work is that it is difficult and complex. His friend George Oppen accused him of intentionally pursuing obscurity to his own detriment. Through the decades (from the 1920s to the 1970s) he does not compromise the poetic sensibility, his own poetic principles. Time and again, Zukofsky tows the line between absolute meaning and total definition and the incomprehensible, the savage absurdity. Of his generation he is the most radical. Harriet Monroe let him edit a volume of Poetry in 1931 where he propounded the “Objectivist” aesthetic. The edition included Lorine Niedecker, George Oppen, Charles Reznikoff, and Basil Bunting – heavyweights for their time. Of course, the contributors made it a point to say that they did not consider themselves “Objectivists,” nor did they adhere to any “Objective” principles. The ploy, it seems, was somewhat contrived. The underlying philosophy of the Objectivists was developed by Zukofsky and explored throughout the duration of his life.

With Zukofsky high art reaches new heights. The pure sound of it brings the words to life. Isn’t that the essence of it after all? The poet is playful, funny, observant, and curious. The masterwork, “A”, is a long poem in 24 parts, one for each hour of the day and written between 1924 and 1974. Is there any other poet with such longevity? It is more consistent than Patterson, more accessible than The Cantos. Like the world itself, “A” is daily life, family life, literary and philosophical life, political and aesthetic life. Oftentimes experimental, there are occasional studies in traditional forms like this unusual (and well known) sonnet from Part 7:

               Horses: who will do it? out of manes? Words
               Will do it, out of manes, out of airs, but
               They have no manes, so there are no airs, birds
               Of words, from me to them no singing gut.
               For they have no eyes, for their legs are wood,
               For their stomachs are logs with print on them;
               Blood red, red lamps hang from necks or where could
               Be necks, two legs stand A, four together M.
               "Street Closed" is what print says on their stomachs;
               That cuts out everybody but the diggers;
               You're cut out, and she's cut out, and the jiggers
               Are cut out. No! we can't have such nor bucks
               As won't, tho they're not here, pass thru a hoop
               Strayed on a manhole — me? Am on a stoop.

This the poet conjectures from wooden work horses on the street. The sonnet is playful, a metaphysical treatment of the reality of the work horses, real horses, poetical horses, and the abstraction of horses. The language is modern, the syllables tight, beat for beat.

Zukofsky’s work can be divided into eras. There is the Objectivist period, the Socialist period, where much of the work is interspersed with Marxist thought, an infatuation with Shakespeare and Henry Adams, an erotic translation of Catullus, obscure and popular periods. One of the last, and most lovely, books he wrote was 80 Flowers, a study of his wife’s garden on Long Island, with language rich and evocative. He was working on one about trees when he passed.

Look up his Selected Poems edited by Charles Bernstein.

The poems there are remarkable.