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.
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.
