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Louis Zukofsky

Louis Zukofsky. His Life . Loious Zukofsky was one of the most important second-generation American modernist poet. He was co-founder and primary theorist of the Objectivist group of poets and was to be an important influence on subsequent generations of poets in America and abroad.

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Louis Zukofsky

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  1. Louis Zukofsky

  2. His Life .. • Loious Zukofsky was one of the most important second-generation American modernist poet. He was co-founder and primary theorist of the Objectivist group of poets and was to be an important influence on subsequent generations of poets in America and abroad. • He was born in New York of Jewish parents and grow up speaking Yiddish.

  3. He entered Columbia University at the age of 16 and completed his graduate studies there in 1924. • In 1926, Zukofsky wrote "Poem Beginning 'The'" and sent it to the poet Ezra Pound in Italy. • Pound responded and published it in the Spring 1928 issue of his journal Exile. • In 1928 Zukofsky began "A," a poem projected as having twenty-four discrete sections, the first seven of which he composed by 1930.

  4. He also taught English at the University of Wisconsin in 1930 and 1931. • Zukofsky returned to "A" in 1935, writing sections 8 through 10 over the course of the next five years. • In 1947 he became a professor of English at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, where he taught for nearly two decades. • He died in 1978.

  5. Major works.. Zukofsky's early works express a concern with social oppression and class struggle. For example, the poem "Mantis" considers the plight of New York City's poor through a meditation on the presence of a praying mantis in the subway.

  6. The theme of "Mantis" is overtly political: the praying mantis becomes a symbol of the poor, lost and harried in a harshly mechanical world. "'Mantis,' an Interpretation," describes the compositional process of "Mantis."

  7. Also concerned with the modern political and historical situation, "Poem Beginning 'The'" addresses Zukofsky's uncertainty about the creation of relevant and significant poetry in the context of twentieth-century economic, cultural, and military upheaval. • Here he also examines his identity as an individual torn between his roots in the rich, ancient Jewish culture and his presence in callow, secular western society.

  8. Also , he has another major work which was the long poem "A". Zukofsky never referred to it without the quotation marks . • Begun in 1927, Zukofsky spent the rest of his life working on "A," expanding the epic to 24 sections, mirroring the hours of the day.

  9. The poem weaves together politics and family, traditional forms and free verse, and features Zukofsky's own father as a major theme. • The complete version of "A" was finally at the printers when the poet died in 1978. • "A" is a collage of images, subjects, literary styles, digressions, allusions, and quoted literary passages.

  10. The structure of "A" is based on the fugue, a musical composition interweaving repeated elements. • The first half of "A" is easy to read. • The second half of the poem is increasingly hermetic and difficult to understand.

  11. "'A' 1-7 is concerned with the self cut loose from the family circle and an ancient, cohesive culture. • In 'A' 8-12 the poet examines and creates connections between past and present, specifically the relation of himself and his poem to history and literary tradition.

  12. 'A' 13-20 catalogues mixed disasters and good fortune. • Finally, in 'A' 21-24 the poem expands to a comprehensive view of personal, human, and natural history.

  13. Louis Zukofsky and his objectivism His poems consists largely of conceptual "objects" that have major implications in human experience. As such, the objects of this poem might be as follows: • Cavalcanti's original poem (and its themes) • human alienation and subservience to economic structures and value systems; "virtuous" duplicity; and abstraction itself

  14. Zukofsky embarks on an analysis of human phenomena, stepping into a realm of abstraction that has genuine bearing on human experience. He leans toward an ethical solution, wherein alienation is struggled against by sincere application of clear vision and a guileless mind.

  15. Further, rather than establishing a rhetorical argument by which a reader can be persuaded, Zukofsky creates an enactment of the poem's subject material (an experience of traveling through the confusions of ideological abstraction) wherein the "objects" of poems perception carry associations, history, and contrary meanings that come into a dynamic sense of play that, rather than concluding into a neat summary statement, continue to expand beyond the simplicity of conventional rhetoric and authorial intent .

  16. Thank You .. Done By : Ahlam Hanan Kholoud Tahani

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