Poet, born in New York City, USA. A leading experimentalist after Pound, his poems first appeared in An Objectivist Anthology (1932). Later works, which experimented with sound and typography, included All: the Collected Short Poems (1965, 1967). He published an autobiography in 1970.
Louis Zukofsky (January 23, 1904 - May 12, 1978) was one of the most important second-generation American modernist poets.
As a child, Zukofsky frequented Yiddish theatres in the Bowery where he saw many works by Shakespeare, Ibsen, Strindberg and Tolstoy performed in Yiddish translations.
Zukofsky considered Ezra Pound to be the most important living poet, and in 1927 he sent his poem Poem beginning "The" to the older man. 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 of the new immigrants to the U.S. and the socialist experiment then occurring in Russia.
Politics
In his early years, Zukofsky was a committed Marxist. 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.
Zukofsky the Objectivist
Pound was impressed by Poem beginning "The" and promoted Zukofsky's work, putting him in contact with other like-minded poets, including William Carlos Williams. 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.
"A"
Zukofsky's major work was the long poem "A" - Zukofsky 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 written in 24 sections, reflecting the hours of the day and the figure of the poet's father is a major theme. The extensive use of music in this work reflects the importance of Zukofsky's collaborations with his wife Celia, a professional musician. Their son Paul Zukofsky became a noted violinist and conductor.
Shorter poems and other writings
In tandem with "A", Zukofsky continued writing shorter poems throughout his life. He continued to write and publish shorter poems and these 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 of Shakespeare's play Pericles, Prince of Tyre .
Late revival
Having suffered critical neglect for most of his career, Zukofsky, along with the other Objectivists, was rediscovered by the Black Mountain and Beat poets in the 1960s and 1970s. The poet and editor Cid Corman was largely responsible, publishing 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 foregrounding of the formal aspects of writing.
Currently the Zukofsky revival continues unabated. 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. Chicago Review (Winter 2004/5) devoted an issue to Zukofsky; If we add to this the hundreds of critical studies and dissertations appearing world-wide along with the perennial conferences devoted to his work, including the recent centennial remembrance at Columbia University, we have only hinted at the interest and trajectory Zukofsky's revival now generates on into the 21st-Century. 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 C. Zukofsky's musical setting of Shakespeare's 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 Paul Zukofsky) (1968) Prepositions: The Collected Critical Essays of Louis Zukofsky (1968) Catullus (1969) The Gas Age (1969) Autobiography (poems set to music by C. 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 Bernstein) (2006)
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