Zukofsky, Louis (Vol. 7) - Zukofsky, Louis 1904–
Zukofsky, Louis 1904–
An American poet, critic, and novelist, Zukofsky led the Objectivist movement of the 1930s. Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams were his mentors and friends; but, as L. S. Dembo commented, he is "more than a coterie poet or a man who owes his place in literary history to his [associations]. To the contrary, he is, for all his eccentricity, both a germinal part of the whole nominalist trend of twentieth-century poetry and a craftsman of extreme subtlety." He works "with the diamond-cutter's precision," as Guy Davenport noted. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 9-12, rev. ed.)
Zukofsky is one of those poets who has made his whole life the subject of his poetry and, unfortunately, made poetry the whole of his life. He writes a seamless poem and for 30 or 40 years now has been writing the same one, starting with "A." Perhaps he knows few ever get past "A" in the lexicon poetry, or life, and wants us to see his...
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