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Louis Zukofsky: Selected Poems

Edited by Charles Bernstein

“Zukofsky is extraordinary reading, and perhaps because it is being published in the context of ‘American’ writers, the echoes of American literary history are difficult to evade.”—Rain Taxi

Overview
Table of Contents

Overview

With an ear tuned to the most delicate musical effects, an eye for exact and heterogeneous details, and a mind bent on experiment, Louis Zukofsky was preeminent among the radical Objectivist poets of the 1930s. This is the first collection to draw on the full range of Zukofsky’s poetry—containing short lyrics, versions of Catullus, and generous selections from “A”, his 24-part “poem of a life”—and provides a superb introduction to a modern master of whom the critic Guy Davenport has written: “Every living American poet worth a hoot has stood aghast before the steel of his integrity.”

The most formally radical poet to emerge among the second wave of American modernists, Louis Zukofsky continues to influence younger poets attracted to the rigor, inventiveness, and formal clarity of his work. Born on New York’s Lower East Side in 1904 to emigrant parents, Zukofsky achieved early recognition when he edited an issue of Poetry devoted to the Objectivist poets, including George Oppen and Charles Reznikoff. In addition to an abundance of short lyrics and a sound-based version of the complete poems of Catullus, he worked for most of his adult life on the long poem “A” of which he said: “In a sense the poem is an autobiography: the words are my life.”

Zukofsky’s work has been described as difficult although he himself said: “I try to be as simple as possible.” In the words of editor Charles Bernstein, “This poetry leads with sound and you can never go wrong following the sound sense. . . . Zukofsky loved to create patterns, some of which are apparent and some of which operate subliminally. . . . Each word, like a stone dropped in a pond, creates a ripple around it. The intersecting ripples on the surface of the pond are the pattern of the poem.” Here for the first time is a selection designed to introduce the full range of Zukofsky’s extraordinary poetry.

Charles Bernstein is Regan Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of over forty books including the essays collections, My Way: Speeches and Poems, A Poetics, and Content’s Dream: Essays 1975-1984 and the poetry collections With Strings, Republics of Reality: 1975-1995, and Dark City.

About the American Poets Project
Elegantly designed in compact editions, printed on acid-free paper, and textually authoritative, the American Poets Project makes available the full range of the American poetic accomplishment, selected and introduced by today’s most discerning poets and critics.
Table of Contents

Introduction by Charles Bernstein

I Sent Thee Late (1922)

from 55 Poems (1923–1935)
from Poem beginning “The”
     First Movement: “And out of olde bokes, in good faith”
     Fifth Movement: Autobiography
     Half-dozenth Movement: Finale, and After
from 29 Poems
     2. “Not much more than being”
     3.”Cocktails”
     5. Ferry
from 29 Songs
     5. It’s a gay li – ife
     8. “Happier, happier, now”
     16. “Crickets’”
     21. “Snows’ night’s winds on the window rattling”
     23. “The Immediate Aim”
     24. This Fall, 1933

from Anew (1935–1944)
1. che di lor suona su nella tua vita
2. “One lutenist played look; your thought was drink:”
9. “For you I have emptied the meaning”
10. “What are these songs”
12. “It’s hard to see but think of a sea”
20. “The lines of this new song are nothing”
21. “Can a mote of sunlight defeat its purpose”
22. Catullus viii

from Some Time (1940–1956)
A Song for the Year’s End
from So That Even a Lover
And Without
from Songs of Degrees

from Barely and widely (1956–1958)
Barely / and / widely
4: A Valentine
11: Head Lines
12: 4 Other Countries

from I’s (pronounced eyes) (1937–1960)
(Ryokan’s scroll)
Peri Poietikes
I’s (pronounced eyes)
To Friends, for Good Health

from “A”
1 (1928)
7 (1928–1930)
9 (first half 1938–1940; second half 1948–1950)
11 (1950)
from 12 (1950–1951)
from 15 (1964)
16 (1963)
from 21 (1967)
23 (1973–1974)

Uncollected
A Foin Lass Bodders (1940)

from Bottom: On Shakespeare (1947–1960)
Julia’s Wild

from Catullus (1958–1969)

from 80 Flowers (1974–1978)
“Heart us invisibly thyme time”
Honesty
Liveforever
Dogwood
Raspberry
Thyme
Vines
Weeds
Zinnia

from Complete Short Poetry
Gamut (1978)

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ISBN: 978-1-931082-95-2 199 pages

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