The notion of the “Objectivists” as posse of
four – Zukofsky, Oppen, Reznikoff, and Rakosi (with Williams, Niedecker, and
Bunting as occasional outriders) – is largely a retrospective construction of
literary history, dating from L. S. Dembo’s 1968 series of interviews with
Zukofsky, Oppen, Reznikoff, and Rakosi, and their 1969 publication in Contemporary
Literature as “The ‘Objectivist’ Poet: Four Interviews.” It is clear, as the
contents of the February 1931 “Objectivists” 1931 issue of Poetry magazine and the 1932 An
“Objectivists” Anthology (both edited by Zukofsky) indicate, that the term
“Objectivist” was originally intended as something quite other than a name for
a given half-dozen poets. Those contents are as follows:
Poetry: A Magazine of Verse 37.1 (February
1931): “Objectivists” 1931
Carl Rakosi
Before
You
Orphean
Lost
237
Fluteplayers
from Finmarken
238
Unswerving
Marine
239
Before
You
240
Louis Zukofsky
"A"Seventh Movement: "There are
different techniques"
Seventh
Movement: "There are different techniques"
152-155
II.
Forrest Anderson
Arrangement
from "Land's End"
159
T.S. Eliot
Marina
160-161
Frances Fletcher
Carmen
et Error (Ovid in Exile)
162
Robert McAlmon
Child-Blithely
163
Carl Rakosi
Parades
164
Kenneth Rexroth
The
Place for Yvor Winters
165-168
Charles Reznikoff
The
English in Virginia April 1607
169-170
R.B.N. Warriston
I.
"No, not your beauty—"
171
II.
"For handsome others"
171-172
III.
"Hope so intricately"
172
IV.
"Seriously, with pain"
172
William Carlos Williams
The
Jungle
173
On
Gay Wallpaper
173-174
3.
"Nothing is lost; the white / shellwhite"
174-175
In
the 'Sconset Bus
175-176
All
the Fancy Things
176-177
The
Red Lily
177-178
To
178-179
The
Avenue of Poplars
179-180
Portrait
of a Lady
181
Full
Moon
182
Louis Zukofsky
–"Her
Soil's Birth"
183
Prop.
LXI
184
Madison,
Wis., Remembering the Bloom of Monticello (1931)
184-185
III. Collaborations
Kenneth Rexroth
Prolegomena
to a Theodicy [abridged by LZ, Aug. 29]
189-192
Jerry Reisman.—L.Z.
After
Les Collines (G.A.) [Guillaume Apollinaire]
193
R.B.N. Warriston
Bora
Bora [arranged by L.Z.]
194-195
William Carlos Williams
March
[in V sections, "Re-written by L.Z. / Feb. 16, 1930"]
196-200
IV. Appendix,Reprinted from Poetry (Chicago) February
1931
Louis Zukofsky
Program:
"Objectivists" 1931
203-205
Acknowledgments
209-210
***
The goals of the Objectivists’ two publishing
programs5– To, Publishers and The Objectivist
Press – are perhaps best summed up in the statement of purpose Charles
Reznikoff composed for the dust wrapper of The Objectivist Press’s first
publications:“The Objectivist
Press is an organization of writers who are publishing their own work and that
of other writers whose work they think ought to be read.” Zukofsky was salaried
editor for To, Publishers, which was largely bankrolled by George and Mary
Oppen; books published by The Objectivist Press, whose editorship was
collective, were underwritten directly by their authors (except for Williams’s Collected
Poems,
which was funded by subscription).
Books published by To, Publishers
William Carlos Williams,
A Novelette and Other Prose (1932).
Ezra Pound, Prolegomena
1: How to Read, Followed by The Spirit of Romance, Part 1 (1932).
Louis Zukofsky, ed., An
“Objectivists” Anthology (1932).
Books published by The Objectivist Press
William Carlos Williams,
Collected Poems 1921-1931, with an introduction by Wallace Stevens
(1934).
George Oppen, Discrete
Series
(1934).
Charles Reznikoff, Jerusalem
the Golden (1934).
Charles Reznikoff, Testimony (prose), with a preface
by Kenneth Burke (1934).
Charles Reznikoff, In
Memoriam: 1933 (1934).
Charles Reznikoff, Separate
Way
(1936).
Louis and Celia Zukofsky revived The Objectivist
Press imprint in 1948 to publish Zukofsky’s A Test of Poetry, and for a while the
Zukofskys corresponded on Objectivist Press letterhead which advertised their
30 Willow Street, Brooklyn address as the Press’s location.
Notes
1Pseudonym for LZ and/or
Irving Kaplan; in the contributors notes, LZ states the Joyce Hopkins is from
Berkeley, CA where his good friend Kaplan lived. Aside from the title, this
poem consists, of a single found line—“Dis in napa now trailing the
sterilized.”— apparently taken straight from Kaplan. See 14 Dec. 1931 letter to
EP for an explanation and possible interpretations of this poem (EP/LZ 120-121).
2 In Bunting’s Collected
Poems
(89-90), this is Ode I.15: “Nothing / substance utters or time,” plus
“Appendix: Iron,” which was subsequently separated out as an individual poem,
Ode I.16: “Molten pool, incandescent spilth of.”
3
Aside from brief notes on contributors, LZ notes that “A poem by Horace
Gregory, arriving too late to be included this month, will appear in a later
issue [“A Tombstone with Cherum,” appeared in the following issue of Poetry 37.6 (March 1931):
306-307]. The editor regrets the delay; also the limitations of page-space
which prevent his presenting contributions by Helen Margaret, Herman Spector,
John W. Gessner, William Lubov, B.J. Israel, Chrystie Streeter, Sherry Mangan,
Donal McKenzie and Jerry Reisman. The editor also regrets the omission of a
blank page representing Ezra Pound’s contribution to this issue—a page reserved
for him as an indication of his belief that a country tolerating outrages like
article 211 of the U.S. Penal Code, publishers’ ‘overhead,’ and other
impediments to literary life, ‘does not deserve to have any literature
whatsoever.’ Mr. Pound gave over to younger poets the space offered him.” In
his contributor’s note, LZ remarks: “His poem ‘A’—in process—includes two
themes: I—desire for the poetically perfect finding its direction inextricably
the direction of historical and contemporary particulars; and II—approximate
attainment of this perfection in the feeling of the contrapuntal design of the
figure transferred to poetry; both themes related to the text of Bach’s St.
Matthew Passion” [Scroggins notes that "figure" is almost certainly a
mistranscription of "fugue," which is easy for a typesetter to
mistake in LZ's handwriting].
4 Reznikoff’s contributions are a short play, Rashi, that originally
appeared in Nine Plays (1927) and an excerpt from “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee,” an
early prose version of what would become Testimony.
5The
publishing history of these two presses is examined in detail in Tom Sharp,
“The ‘Objectivists’ Publications,” Sagetrieb 3.3 (Winter 1984):
41-47.
