Editorial Notes

Some Notes on the Current State of the Notes

•           At present the Z-site consists primarily of a reasonably comprehensive set of annotations to “A” and The Complete Short Poetry, reasonably full bibliographical information, plus further information and notes on the other works. There is some documentary materials, and it is expected that this area will gradually expand. The Textual Notes are rudimentary, mostly listing errors in “A” that have already been publicly noted or other obvious misprints, but virtually no serious work has been done in this area. Suggestions for other areas that could be usefully added to the site are welcome.

•           To begin with, a primary task of this website has been to pull together the basic information and annotations that has been done so far on LZ’s work, which have been scattered and often difficult to access. Scholarly work on LZ’s work began in 1969 with the publication of CZ’s A Bibliography of Louis Zukofsky and L.S. Dembo’s interviews with LZ, Oppen, Reznikoff and Rakosi, which were conducted in association with a conference on the Objectivists organized the year before. However, it would be yet another decade before substantial critical work began to appear in mainstream academic venues, with the publication of the essays in Louis Zukofsky: Man and Poet (1979), edited by Carroll F. Terrell, Barry Ahearn’s Zukofsky’s “A” (1983) and a more or less steady trickle of articles, particularly in Sagetrieb since 1982. With the recent centennial of LZ’s birth, it seems a good time to consolidate what has been done, which also will make apparent the unevenness of attention the larger body of LZ’s work has so far received.

•            Scholars using this site should be cautious and double-check quotations, references, etc. Aside from the inevitable errors that creep into any project of this size, the fact that I am based in Asia imposes limitations on my access to libraries, and frequently I have had to rely on internet texts or second-hand sources for quotations or references. In many cases it has not been possible to track down or identify the precise editions used by LZ, although the latter question will be aided by the partial lists of LZ’s library which will be put up soon. Please let me know if any errors or inaccuracies are spotted.

•           In his reading and use of sources, LZ is possibly the most canonical American poet of the 20th century. The immediate advantage of this is that the majority of LZ’s sources are readily available on the web, which makes this project much easier than one might have originally anticipated. It can be presumed that unacknowledged quotations are from the internet, and therefore can be readily searched and found. Scholarly users of this site in particular should exercise caution with respect to the sources and quotations given on the site since it has often not been possible to identify or check the precise edition LZ was using. Over time this should be refined and hopefully supporting materials, such as a list of LZ’s library can be added.

•           The notes attempt to stick to reasonably objective annotation, background, source identification and cross-references, while avoiding more speculative interpretation, although recognizing there is no clear demarcation and that in some cases speculation may be all we have. Also, keeping in mind that this is a tool intended potentially for students as well as scholars, I have often risked annotating what should be obvious to most readers. Throughout most of “A”, LZ incorporates a considerable amount of contemporary, newsy references, much of which is quite ephemeral, although how ephemeral will often depend on the reader’s own personal history. Many of us can readily recall various images LZ evokes in the 1960s sections, but increasingly more cannot. There is unquestionably much more such detail of this nature that might be added to these notes.

•           Dates of composition: From early on, LZ was in the habit of meticulously dating and preserving his manuscripts (he never typed). The specific dates I have noted for given works are usually from these manuscripts as documented in Booth and Henderson, but they should be taken with some care because it is often not clear precisely at what point in the composition process these dates refer. Most often the dates appear to indicate the completion of the original version, and sometimes but not always LZ will date significant revisions. The sources for composition dates are CZ’s A Bibliography of Louis Zukofsky (1969), updated in Terrell (1979), which gives a year by year chronology of composition, and Marcella Booth’s A Catalogue of the Louis Zukofsky Manuscript Collection (1975), which including specific dates written on manuscripts and is updated by Cathy Henderson’s “Supplement to Marcella Booth’s ‘A Catalogue of the Louis Zukofsky Manuscript Collection’” (1987).

•            Quotations from standard English works, e.g. Shakespeare and Milton, have been grabbed somewhat unsystematically and consequently may be inconsistent in spelling and sometimes textual readings. It would be desirable to systematically regularize these according to the editions LZ used. LZ’s primary Shakespeare edition was the New Cambridge edition of The Complete Poems and Plays, ed. W.A. Neilson and C.J. Hill (Houghton Mifflin/Riverside, 1942). However, it is apparent and not surprising that particularly in the case of Shakespeare, LZ used several different editions—modernized editions in most cases but sometimes old spelling versions (particularly for Pericles). As he indicates in some later sections of “A” and particularly in Bottom, LZ was very interested in textual problems, especially in Shakespeare, and often preferred alternative readings to those accepted by most modern scholars. LZ owned a copy of the First Quartos of Shakespeare’s Poems and Pericles, for which he thanks Mark Van Doren in Bottom (4); this is Shakespeares Sonnets, Lucrece, Passonate Pilgrim, Pericles Being a Reproduction in Facsimile of the First Editions, edited by Sidney Lee (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905), from which LZ quotes extensively as well as responding to Lee’s introduction to Pericles in Bottom (293-294, 322-324,328-329), and he also often uses first Quarto texts of the poems.

•            Translations: LZ relied heavily on translations, frequently adopting or adapting the wording of specific renditions. I have tried to indicate whenever we know the specific translations LZ used, which for the most part are easy enough to identify either from internal evidence or from such sources as the partial lists of LZ’s library books. Unfortunately, the internet is often not very scrupulous about identifying precise sources and translators, so there are scattered cases of unacknowledged translators. When offering translations of untranslated passages in LZ’s works, I generally have preferred to use translations that are as literal as possible and follow the syntax closely, in some cases jury-rigging my own versions.

•           “A”-22 and “A”-23 pose special problems for the annotator—indeed, I am inclined to agree with those who feel that the identification of sources in these sections is of limited value in reading the poems. Nevertheless, there is also something irresistible in attempting to uncover the sources behind texts that by and large are almost entirely constructed from prior texts, however complex and peculiar their transformations. To a large extent, the notes to these movements incorporate the source identifications made by prior scholarship, plus various additional sources I have been able to discover. But they are far from complete, however that might be conceived, and the work of Leggott and Rieke on these sections clearly implies there are limits to the adequacy of traditional annotation in revealing what LZ is doing with his sources in these texts. Perhaps what is ultimately required is the digital reproduction and transcription of LZ’s working notebooks and reading marginalia (see Paul Zukofsky on the latter), as well as a list of LZ’s library.

•            Although there are some exceptions, I have largely avoided hyperlinks outside of this website in order to avoid the interminable problem of dead links. In most cases, sources are extensively enough quoted that it is an easy matter to search for the fuller texts, assuming they have not subsequently disappeared. However, the bibliographies of Sources Used by LZ does include links to available internet sources.

•            Dictionaries: As is well-known, in his later life LZ acquired and was fond of using the Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia in ten volumes, from which he used both etymological information and sample quotations. Happily, this dictionary is freely available on-line, and I have used it often for definitions and etymological information in the notes for “A”-12 and following, since LZ mentions that he acquired the Century around 1950 (Prep+ 35). While the Century is a marvelous work, at times its definitions can be quaint and quirky, so occasionally for the sake of lucidity I have opted for a more standard dictionary definition. According to Quartermain (“Writing and Authority” 160), in writing “Thanks to the Dictionary” off and on during the 1930s, LZ used two different dictionaries: Funk and Wagnalls Practical Standard Dictionary (1930) and Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (1917).

Last revised 21 Nov. 2006