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Table of Contents
Excerpt from "A" - 12 by Louis Zukofsky
The Serpent and the Fire (pp. 512-514)
Biography of Louis Zukofsky
Zukofsky was born in 1904, on the Lower East Side. He was the youngest child of Jewish-Russian immigrants. The Zukofsky family spoke Yiddish at home. His older sister never learned English and his older brother introduced Louis to Yiddish theater and literature, most notably the work of the poet “Yehoash” Solomon Bloomgarden (1870-1927). Zukofsky attended Columbia University, starting when he was 16 years old. Ezra Pound was a significant mentor; providing some of his first opportunities for publication (see the discussion of Poem beginning “The” in the Yiddish Connections section), detailed feedback, and introductions to larger literary networks. Zukofsky's are characterized by their Hermetic quality, a attribution of strange and almost illegible literary significance. However, as Barry Ahearn points out that Zukofsky's attention to the “elementary components—musical notes, letters, images—coalesce to produce subtle harmonies. Words, even the most common, have multiple valences, allowing a broad array of relationships in sound, syntax, and thought” (Ahearn viii). Such lyricism often resists plain interpretation of meaning rooted in a lexical or symbolic reading alone.
External links:
Objectivist Movement
Book review about book about the Objectivists: https://journals.openedition.org/erea/9264#
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Book with digital access through IUP: The Zukofsky Era: Modernity, Margins, and the Avant-Garde 1https://sshelco-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/202aau/TN_cdi_askewsholts_vlebooks_9781421406114
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Video (paper being presented) Ben Hickman - Communism and Modernism: the Case of Louis Zukofsky: https://youtu.be/9yyxGm6RrqI?si=_ecCgNz9cQx945cM
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QUOTES
“This can be seen in his attempts to place his first major critical work, “Sincerity and Objectification: With Special Reference to the Works of Charles Reznikof” (1929) in the Menorah Journal…It is fascinating that the Menorah Journal editor considered the piece to be a translation, because in fact it was an original work, composed in English, meant to be the manifesto of a new poetic movement called Objectivism. The manifesto is quite obscure and complex, but does not necessarily convey the foreign to a modern reader. Something about Zukofsky’s literary voice, even when he was attempting to be the most modern, American, and literary version of himself, spoke to his contemporaries of the Old World that they had left behind” (Ponichtera 10). This submission was rejected.
Possitioning him relative to the Introspectivists: “Zukofsky, who went much further than the Introspectivists in his explorations of the relationships between external objects and subjective experience, doubtless also responded to this aspect of the poem” (Ponichtera 13).
[A-12]
Sections 1 - 12 on Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/a1120000zuko
Sections 13 - 21 on Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/a13210000zuko
I have some screen shots of the index to upload later tonight
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- Long poem (A 126-261)
- This is where Rothenberg's version of the poem beings (A 138)
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Here are notes for the section we're working on. I can't make heads or tails of them. https://z-site.net/notes-to-a/a-12/
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(PUT THIS INTO QUOTE FORM, IF WE CAN FIND THE CODE)
“This poem, a life’s work begun in 1928, was ultimately published in its entirety in 1978 shortly after the poet’s death. Although the main body of the poem was completed by 1974, Zukofsky spent his final years composing an index for the poem, an effort that may be seen as integral to the writing of the poem, given the author’s extensive use of allusion and quotation” (Ponichtera 7)
Form
Possibly see chapter 1 in this book: https://sshelco-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/sqqodt/01SSHELCO_IUP_ALMA51191438110003564
- Unordered List Item flow charts (Z. 163)
- substance, being, non-being (A 164)
- integral 2 sound / story (A 173)
- integral (A 138) music speech
- letters (A 216-224)
- letter poems (A 231-234)
Non-Word Symbols and Un-Vocalized Structures
Rothenberg's selection in The Serpent and the Fire from Zukofsky's A-12 begins at a natural starting point. Part of the illustrative work including non-word symbols is pulling the reader's attention to something significant—something worth thinking about.
This is the symbol for an integral in calculus (I think?) The symbol also may be read as an f hole, a sound hole carved into wooden instruments like violins, cellos, and guitars, located on the opposite side of the bridge.
The Free interplay of associations between music and mathematics, music and plain speech, is not lost on the part of the poet's intellectual presentation of his life as the subject of such as structured thing as poetry. A Repetition of the symbol later in A-12.
Take for example the valentine style shape of the “Paul and Louis Heart” (A 129)
The longer A-12 also features poetry presented on the page through the motion of flow charts and the facimile representation of type-writer formatted letter.
A Meaning?
On the surface level Zukofsky writes about the relationship between his father, Paul, and his son, Paul. A-12 contains many literary and cultural allusions to mythology, religion, philosophy, and twentieth-century history. Zukofsky was well read, and his poetry attempts to incite the imagination of the read through allusions to Shakespears' A Midsummer-Nights Dream (Bottom especially), esoteric readings of the book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible, words of wisdom from chassidic Rebbes, meditations on the passion of Christ, epic impressions of Greek myth, and don't forget B. Spinoza (A 188-89).
The poetics of lyrical letter play intensify when Zukofsky plays around with the theme of names by modifying the reader’s experience with his father’s name by splicing the primary parts of the name P A U L. Take for example the line that alludes to Israel Ben Eliezer (1698-1760), known by Chassidim as the Baal Shem Tov בעל שם טוב, or by the acronym BeShT., the Master of the Good Name, or the Beshtבעש“ט, (A 139) (R 513), a chassidic Rebbe from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the town of Mezhbizh, the Baal Shem Tov attracted local attention as wandering sage and miracle worker.
To greet profanity
And from it draw the strength to live,
Said the Baalshem—
Thaew—as good as his name.
To sing a michtam of David,
To be alive, that is good.
Zukofsky is citing the teaching of the holy Rebbe with credulity founded in the very holy letters of his good name, a Hebrew name that moves over into Zukofsky's poem transcribed into a non-standard English phonetic spelling and a translation; Zukofsky brings down both meanings of the Besht's name(s), an expansion of the comprehensive commentary feature of traslation. Although the “Thaew” spelling suggest particular etymological choices for reading טוב what's most relevant to the poetic placement of this name-symbol against the “michtam of David”, לדוד מכתם Psalms 16 and 56-60 However, michtam is one of those pesky archaic Hebrew words that doesn't really have a clear meaning. Modern Israeli Hebrew has taken it in to mean “epigram” while “a psalm that was especially precious to David according to Metzudot as brought down by the the chassidic readings of the Pslams.
Essentially, I am saying that Z. juxtaposes two instances of reliable voice, the voice of the Besht and the voice of David; what makes this moment supper poetic and cool is the subtle nudge away from scrupulous inquiry into the legitimacy of the source that comes from oral tradition, the literal words of the Besht and the midrashic legend that David authored the Psalms, the very presence an unknown word, a word that invites a variety of vocalizations (musical performances) and readings (literary meanings), this recognition transforms “profanity” or wickedness into good, which is the strength of the living through life.
What does this really really mean when Z modifies the reader’s experience with his father’s name by splicing the primary parts of the name P A U L?
The voice of Paul, Zukofsky's son.
All summer
Paul babbled of him
Living his life
In young memory.
Ready to speak, like grandpa Paul.
“Now let's call the cottage
Grandpa Paul.
I'm sorry he died,
he asked me to come one
a week-day,
when he could buy me a toy
I liked him
better than everyone.”
Paul, Z's son, does some work reworking the linguistic landscape.??!
Yiddish connections (???)
Zukofsky's first language was Yiddish, yet he wrote exclusively in English. His use of translation was heavily influenced by the mentorship of Ezra Pound. Describing a 1929 poem, Zukofsky's first significant publication, Ponichtera describes Zukofky's fusion of multiple sources as, “The poem captures the fully incongruent cacophony of voices surrounding the modern American writer. Instead of Eliot’s dour vision of the decline and breakdown of civilization, for Zukofsky, this chaos represents the energy of rebirth” (2). Zukofky drew on his own funds of knowledge, a language and literary heritage that would remain hidden to his monolingual English readers.
Additionally, “The hybridity of Yiddish is a key element of A-4. One moment in the canto, which initiates a long series of quotations from Yehoash, opens with a few lines that establish the conflict between the generations: “They assail us / ‘Religious, snarling monsters’ –.”3939 In stark contrast, in the next lines, he translates a poem from Yehoash written in the style of Japanese poetry, “Shimone-san”:” (11-12)
Overall, “Not merely a piece of linguistic showmanship, Zukofsky’s method of translation informs his overall poetics, which embraces the potential of bringing diverse and even clashing voices into conversation with one another” (Ponichtera 1).
External link:
References
Ahearn, Barry. “About A: Introduction.” A. Louis Zukofsky, New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2011, pp. vii-xix.
