Zukofsky, Louis - Michael Davidson (essay date 1991)
Michael Davidson (essay date 1991)
SOURCE: "Dismantling 'Mantis': Reification and Objectivist Poetics," in American Literary History, Vol. 3, No. 3, Fall, 1991, pp. 521-41.
[Davidson is an American poet, educator, and the author of The San Francisco Renaissance and Postmodern Poetics (1983). In the following essay, he assesses the signif icance of "Mantis," Zukofsky's "most graphic example of formalism in dialogue with modern materialism"; Davidson notes that the amalgamation of poetic form and materialism is also a prominent aspect of "A."]
"… thinking with the things as they exist. I come into a room and I see a table. Obviously, I can't make it eat grass."
Louis Zukofsky, Interview
Despite Louis Zukofsky's claim that he can't make a table eat grass, at various points in his poetry he appears to have attempted just that. In "A"-7, for example, he...
[The entire page is 7530 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Navigate
Related Topics
