Zukofsky, Louis 1904–

Zukofsky, an American, is a brilliant and idiosyncratic poet and novelist. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 9-12, rev. ed.)

Louis Zukofsky's poetry is compounded of great love, equal care, and a singular perception of the nature of words in all their manifold senses. There is no one who writes with greater intelligence of what our common world is, nor of the tradition of the family in it, nor of the mind itself asked to see reason in the flux of war and economic confinement. His long poem, "A" …, is itself a singular history of a man's will to relate, in all senses, the circumstances in which he lives.

Robert Creeley, "Louis Zukofsky: 'A' 1-12 & 'Barely and Widely'," in Sparrow #18, November, 1962.

Louis Zukofksy has defined his poetics as a function, having as lower limit, speech, and upper limit, song. It is characteristic of him to say that a...

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