Anew (1946)
#1 che di
lor suona su nella tua vita
4 Feb. 1937
Commentary
Hatlen, Burton. “Zukofsky, Wittgenstein, and the
Poetics of Absence.” Sagetrieb 1.1
(Spring 1982): 63-65, 91-93.
Title: che
di lor suona su nella tua vita: see note to this poem (CSP 102-103) where LZ identifies the
source of this line in Dante, Inferno
IV.77, as well as giving a translation. As LZ indicates, the setting is in
Limbo and Virgil is explaining why the group of four pagan poets—Homer, Horace,
Ovid and Lucan—exist in a sphere of light: “And he said to me: ‘Their honoured
name, which sounds of them, up in that
life of thine, gains favour in heaven which thus advanced them” (trans.
J.A. Carlyle).
#2 “One lutenist
played look; your thought was drink”
2 March
1937/ Calendar (1942)
77.1 One lutenist played look…: whether or not LZ has a particular lutenist in mind,
this probably refers to the popular practice of “word painting” in Renaissance
madrigals.
77.3 Ben: Ben Jonson (1572-1637), whose “To
Celia” (see “A”-18.390.31) is evoked in the opening line:
Drinke to me, onely, with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mind;
Or leave a kisse but in the cup,
And Ile not looke for wine.
77.4 Music avoids impossibility: when
originally published in Calendar,
this poem had an epigraph: “’—difficult, I wish it were impossible’ / Ben
Jonson (on music)”; however, LZ appears to have gotten his Jo(h)nsons mixed up
here since the quotation is actually attributed to Samuel Johnson, supposedly
in response a violinist’s performance: “Difficult, do you call it, sir? I wish
it were impossible.”
77.8 marsh-marigold: or cowslip (caltha palustris), a yellow wildflower
that grows in marshy areas, usually flowers in early spring but does not last
long.
#3 “The green plant grows”
2 Dec.
1937
78.11 Went
a lande a / Ship of Lusseboene…: LZ notes this as from Amerigo Vespucci
(1454-1512), the Italian navigator after which “America” was named. Apparently
the source is the earliest account of America printed in English from an
anonymous Renaissance compilation based on the epistolary accounts of Vespucci
with additions, printed in Antwerp in 1511. Republished in Edward Arber, The First Three English Books on America,
Birmingham, 1885:
“Of
the newe landes and of ye people founde by the messengers of the kynge of
Portyugale named Emanuel. of the R. [5] Dyners Nacyons crystened. Of Pope John
and his landes and of the costely keyes and wonders molo dyes that in that
lande is.
Here
aforetymes [formerly] in the yere of our Lorde god. M.CCCC.xcvi. [1496] and so
be we with shyppes of Lusseboene
[Lisbon] sayled oute of Portyugale thorough the commaundement of the Kynge
Emanuel. So haue we had our vyage. For by fortune ylandes ouer the great see
with great charge and daunger so haue we at the laste founde oon lordshyp where
we sayled well. ix.C. [900] mylee [mile] by the cooste of Selandes there we at
ye laste went a lande but that lande is not nowe knowen for
there haue no masters wryten thereof nor it knowethe and it is named Armenica
[America] there we sawe meny wonders of beestes and fowles yat [that] we haue
neuer seen before the people of this lande haue no kynge nor lorde nor theyr
god But all thinges is comune. This
people goeth all naked, but the men and women haue on theyr heed necke Armes
Knees and fete all with feders [feathers] bounden for their bewtynes [beauty]
and fayrenes.
These
folke lyuen [live] lyke bestes without any resenablenes. and the wymen be also
as common. And the men hath conuersacyon with the wymen, who that they ben or
who they fyrst mete, is she his syster, his moder, his daughter, or any other
kyndred. And the wymen be very hoote and dysposed to lecherdnes. And they etc
[eat] also on[e] a nother. The man etethe [eateth] his wyfe, his chylderne as
we also haue seen, and they hange also the bodyes or persons fleeshe in the
smoke as men do with vs swynes fleshe. And that lande is ryght full of folke
for they lyue commonly. iii.C. [300] yere and more as with sykenesse they dye
nat they take much fysshe for they can goen vnder the water and fe[t]che so the
fysshes out of the water. and they werre [war] also on[e] vpon a nother for the
olde men brynge the yonge men thereto that they gather a great company thereto
of towe [two] partyes and come the on[e] ayene [against] the other to the felde
or bateyll [battle] and slee [slay] on[e] the other with great hepes [heaps].
And nowe holdeth the fylde [field] they take the other prysoners And they
brynge them to deth and ete them and as the deed [dead] is eten then fley
[flay] they the rest. And they been [are] than [then] eten also or otherwyse
lyue they longer tymes and many yeres more than other people for they haue
costely spyces and rotes [roots] where they them selfe recouer with and hele
[heal] them as they be seke [sick].”
#4 “So sounds grass, and if it is sun or no sun”
27-28
Feb. 1938
79.4 Teruel:
city east of Madrid where a fierce battle was fought during the winter of
1937-38, finally won by the Nationalists in Feb. 1938, a major turning-point
leading to the eventual triumph a year later of Franco’s forces over the
Republicans (or Loyalists) in the Spanish Civil War (see “A”-10.118.20).
#5 “Ah spring, when with a thaw of blue”
2 March
1938/ Calendar (1942)
#6 “Anew, sun, to fire summer”
1-4 Aug.
1938
Commentary
Dembo, L.S. "Louis Zukofsky:
Objectivist Poetics and the Quest for Form." American Literature 44.1 (March 1972): 74-96. Rpt. Terrell (1979):
293-294.
The
manuscript has a note indicating that this was written at “Palisades below
Alpine / and Rockland Lake, N.Y.” (Booth 68). The Palisades are a range of
cliffs along the west bank of the Hudson River from roughly opposite Columbia
University and running immediately north of Manhattan. Alpine, New Jersey is
along the Palisades Parkway and further north is Rockland Lake on a ridge of
Hook Mountain in the Palisades area. This is all national park area easily
accessible from NYC.
#7 “When the crickets”
28 Aug.
1938/ Calendar (1942)
#8 “Has the sum”
5 Dec.
1938
Commentary
Dembo, L.S. "Louis
Zukofsky: Objectivist Poetics and the Quest for Form." American Literature 44.1 (March 1972):
74-96. Rpt. Terrell (1979): 294.
80.1 sum / Twenty-five…: possibly relevant
here that CZ would have been 25 when this poem was written, although her
birthday is in January.
80.13 Ra: the Egyptian sun god represented as
having a human body with a hawk’s head crowned with a soar disk and uraeus
(sacred serpent).
#9 “For you I have emptied the meaning”
6 Dec.
1938
Commentary
Dembo, L.S. "Louis
Zukofsky: Objectivist Poetics and the Quest for Form." American Literature 44.1 (March 1972):
74-96. Rpt. Terrell (1979): 294-295.
81.15 kirtle:
a knee-length tunic, or woman’s dress or skirt.
#10 “What are these songs”
6 Dec.
1938
#11 “In the midst of things”
5 Dec.
1941, 29 March 1942
81.4 DICKEYVILLE…: a village on the western
edge of the city of Baltimore, Maryland along the banks of Gwynn’s Falls
founded in the late 17th century. In 1934 much of the then disintegrating
village was sold to a developer who decided to preserve and restore it as a
model historic village. The one remaining mill was indeed turned into homes and
shops.
82.1 VOICE OF THE HOUSE-DOOR / (Speaking after
Catullus)…: see Catullus, Carmina
67, in which the poet converses with a door who recounts the details that
follow in the stanza, although this is LZ’s paraphrase with the final stanza
entirely his invention.
#12
“It’s hard to see but think of a sea”
17 Jan. 1944
Commentary
Quartermain, Peter. “Recurrencies: No. 12 of
Louis Zukofsky’s Anew.” Paideuma 7.3 (Winter 1978): 523-538.
Rpt. Disjunctive Poetics (1992):
44-58.
Quartermain
points out that at the time LZ wrote this poem he was working for Hazeltine
Electronics Corp. writing instruction manuals. The quotation from Hendrik
Antoon Lorentz that LZ gives in the notes to Anew #29 is also relevant here, and Quartermain offers other
definitions and explanations of the electrical concepts involved in this poem.
82.13 condensers: or capacitors, an electric circuit element used to
store charge temporarily, consisting in general of two metallic plates
separated and insulated from each other by a dielectric (AHD).
83.11 forty years: Quartermain points out LZ
wrote this poem a week before he turned 40.
83.16 child: PZ was born a few months
previously in Oct. 1943.
#13 “A last cigarette”
15 May
1939
Commentary
Dembo, L.S. "Louis
Zukofsky: Objectivist Poetics and the Quest for Form." American Literature 44.1 (March 1972):
74-96. Rpt. Terrell (1979): 290-291.
84.6 World’s
Fair: a World’s Fair was held in NYC in 1939-40.
#14 “’One oak fool box’;—the pun”
2 Dec.
1942
84.1 the
pun: presumably on “toolbox.”
84.4 dimout: blackout.
85.1 acanthus: herb or shrub with large
spiny leaves and spikes of white or purplish flowers; in architecture, a design
patterned after the leaves of one of these plants, especially on the capitals
of Corinthian columns. One would guess LZ is thinking of Grand Central Station
here.
85.5 Dooley: created by Finley Peter Dunne
(1867-1936), Mr. Dooley was a working class Chicago saloon keeper who
satirically commented on politics and government policy of the day; also
mentioned and quoted at “A”-14.357.5f. Here LZ standardizes some Dooley remarks
found in Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War
(1899), “On the Anglo-Saxon”: “I’m what Hogan calls wan iv th’ mute, ingloryous
heroes iv th’ war; an’ not so dam mute,
ayther. Some day, Hinnissy, justice’ll be
done me, an’ th’ likes iv me; an’, whin
th’ story iv a gr-great battle is written, they’ll print th’ kilt, th’ wounded,
th’ missin’, an’ th’ seriously disturbed. An’ thim that have bore
themselves well an’ bravely an’ paid th’ taxes an’ faced th’ deadly
newspa-apers without flinchin’ ‘ll be advanced six pints an’ given a chanst to
tur-rn jack f’r th’ game.”
85.14 If number, measure and weighing…: from
Plato, Philebus (see Prep+
6):
“Socrates. ‘I mean to say, that if arithmetic, mensuration, and weighing be
taken away from any art, that which remains will not be much.’ Protarchus. ‘Not much, certainly.’ Socrates. ‘The rest will be only
conjecture, and the better use of the senses which is given by experience and
practice, in addition to a certain power of guessing, which is commonly called
art, and is perfected by attention and pains’” (55; trans. Benjamin Jowett).
85.18 Appreciation of dawn / After the sixth day…:
Cf. Genesis 1:31: “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it
was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.”
# 15 “No it was no dream of coming death”
3-5 Dec.
1941
Commentary
Dembo, L.S. "Louis
Zukofsky: Objectivist Poetics and the Quest for Form." American Literature 44.1 (March 1972):
74-96. Rpt. Terrell (1979): 291-292.
Title misprint in the CSP edition: Not [should be] No.
85.5 From a window looked down / On the river…:
at the time this poem was written, the Zukofskys were living at 1088 East 180th
Street directly opposite the Bronx Park where the Bronx River comes out at the
south end; see description in “It was”
(CF 181-182) and note at 85.10 below.
85.10 Whose
waters seemed unwillingly…: Ahearn points out (EP/LZ 202) that the parenthetical quotation is from the first
stanza of “Bronx,” by Joseph Rodman Drake (1795-1820):
I sat me down upon a green bank-side,
Skirting the smooth edge of a gentle river,
Whose waters seemed unwillingly to
glide,
Like parting friends who linger while
they sever;
Enforced to go, yet seeming still unready,
Backward they wind their way in many a wistful eddy.
#16 “I walk in the old street”
29 May-22
June 1944
Commentary
Conte, Joseph M. Unending Design: The Forms of Postmodern Poetry. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
UP, 1991. 152-153
#17 Guillaume de Machault (1300-1377) Ballade:
Plourès, dames
5-6 Nov.
1941
LZ notes
that the French text was given to him by Yves Tinayre (1891-1972) on 4 Nov.
1941 (Booth 101). Tinayre was a French singer and musicologist, who was an
important figure in the revival of Medieval and Renaissance music; he met and
became a good friend of EP’s during the latter’s London years and sang in the
premier of EP’s Villon opera, Le
Testament, in Paris in 1926.
Title: Guillaume de Machault was a French court composer as well as poet. LZ translates
the first of the three stanzas of this Ballade:
Ploures, dames, ploures vostre servant.
Qui ay toudis mis mon cuer et m'entente.
Corps et desir et penser en servant
L'onneur de vous que Dieus gart et augmente.
Vestes vous de noir pour
mi.
Car j'ay cuer teint et viaire pali.
Et si me voy de mort en aventure.
Se Dieus et vous ne me prenes en cure.
#18 “The bird that cries like a baby”
30 Sept.
1940
87.6 Virginia creeper: a climbing vine with
bluish-black berry-like fruit; also called woodbine.
87.10 Forsythia named Golden-rain: forsythia is a bush of the genus Forsythia with early-blooming intense
bright yellow flowers; although plausible to call them “Golden rain,” this name
usually refers to a different shrub.
87.16 saving daylight: during WWII, President
Roosevelt instituted daylight saving time, called “war time,” as an energy
saving measure; see “Light 13” (CSP
120).
87.19 oldest Throne’s baby…: the Japanese
Chrysanthemum Throne, claims to be the world’s oldest continuous monarchy. The
following quotation from an Imperial Edict issued by the Japanese Emperor
Hirohito (1901-1989) on the occasion of the signing of the Tripartite Pace with
Hitler and Mussolini in Sept. 1940: "To enhance our great righteousness in
all the earth and to make of the world one household is the great injunction
bequeathed by our Imperial Ancestors and we lay this to heart day and night. In
the stupendous crisis now confronting the world it appears that war and
confusion will be endlessly aggravated and mankind suffer incalculable
disasters. We fervently hope that disturbances will cease and peace be restored
as soon as possible…. We are therefore deeply gratified that this pact has been
concluded between the Three Powers. The task of enabling each nation to find
its proper place, and all individuals to live in peace and security, is of the
greatest magnitude. It is unparalleled in history…" (Quartermain 212).
#19 “And so till we have died”
8 April
1941
#20
“The lines of this new song are nothing”
7 March 1939
Commentary
Taggart, John. Songs of Degrees: Essays on Contemporary Poetry and Poetics.
Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 1994. 88.
#21
“Can a mote of sunlight defeat its purpose”
15 Sept. 1942
Commentary
Scroggins, Mark. Louis Zukofsky and the Poetry of Knowledge. Tuscaloosa: U of
Alabama P, 1998. 46-49.
Stanley, Sandra Kumanoto. Louis Zukofsky and the Transformation of a Modern American Poetics.
Berkeley, CA: U of California P, 1994. 89-90.
There are
two mentions of “mote” in Bottom
(299, 328)—actually both close quotations from Hamlet and Pericles
respectively—which correlate with the sense used here and suggest that this
poem can be understood in terms of Bottom’s
“definition of love.” The Shakespeare sources are Pericles IV.iv [spoken by Gower as the chorus]: “Like motes and
shadows see them move awhile. / Your ears unto your eyes I’ll reconcile,” and Hamlet I.i [spoken by Horatio]: “A mote
it is to trouble the mind’s eye.” See also King
John IV.i: “Arthur: Is there no remedy?
Hubert: —None, but to lose your eyes.
Arthur: O heaven, that there were but
a mote in yours, / A grain, a dust, a gnat, a wandering hair, / Any annoyance
in that precious sense! / Then feeling what small things are boisterous there,
/ Your vile intent must needs seem horrible”; also Love’s Labour’s Lost IV.iii, A
Midsummer Night’s Dream V.i). See also Prep+
34.
LZ,
as well as Shakespeare, may also have in mind the following from Matthew 7:1-7:
“Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be
judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And
why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not
the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me
pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt
thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.”
#22
Catullus viii
Nov.? 1939
Commentary
Gordon, David.
“Three Notes on Zukofsky’s Catullus
I ‘Catullus viii’: 1939-1960.” In Terrell (1979): 371-381.
Translation of the following Catullus poem (text
as in Loeb edition):
Miser Catulle, desinas
ineptire,
et quod vides perisse perditum ducas.
fulsere quondam candidi tibi soles,
cum ventitabas quo puella ducebat
amata nobis quantum amabitur nulla.
ibi illa multa tum iocosa fiebant,
quae tu volebas nec puella nolebat,
fulsere vere candidi tibi soles.
nunc iam illa non vult: tu quoque, impotens, noli,
nec quae fugit sectare, nec miser vive,
sed obstinata mente perfer, obdura.
vale, puella. iam Catullus obdurate,
nec te requiret nec rogabit invitam:
at tu dolebis, cum rogaberis nulla
scelesta, nocte. quae tibi manet vita?
quis nunc te adibit? cui videberis bella?
quem nunc amabis? cuius esse diceris?
quem basiabis? cui labella mordebis?
at tu, Catulle, destinatus obdura.
#23
“Gulls over a rotting hull”
1-3 Sept. 1939
#24
“The men in the kitchens”
1939
LZ notes in the manuscript that this came from a
dream the morning of 28 Oct. 1939 (Booth 160).
#25
for Zadkine
7 May 1944
Commentary
Giorcelli, Cristina. “A Stony Language:
Zukofsky’s Zadkine.” The Idea and the
Thing in Modernist American Poetry. Ed. Cristina Giorcelli. Palermo:
Editrice Ila Palma, 2001. 109-139.
Jones, Alan. “The Zukofsky-Zadkine Files.” Arts Magazine 66.5 (Jan. 1992): 25-26.
Title Zadkine: Ossip Zadkine (1890-1967),
Russian-born sculptor based in Paris who spent the years of WWII (June
1941-Sept. 1945) in NYC and whom LZ met at that time.
90.2 La Prisonnière: a 1943 bronze sculpture created by Zadkine as a response to the
war, which depicts a figure with three aspects—one a screaming female—enclosed
in a cage-like structure that looks made of wood (“wood once now stone”). The
piece was first exhibited Jan. 1944 in NYC (Giorcelli 109); photos of this and
other Zadkine sculptures can be found in Giorcelli.
90.13 Furies sometime called kind: Furies is
the Roman name (L. Furiae) for the
personifications of vengeance, which were often if not always conceived of as
three in number. In Gk. called the Erinyes or Eumenides, the latter meaning the
“kindly ones,” which is either a euphemistic designation to deflect their
frightening nature or refers to their merciful transformation through Athene’s
intervention in the Orestes legend.
90.27 Daphne: nymph with whom Apollo fell in
love and pursued until her father, the river god Peneus, transformed her into a
laurel tree. Zadkine made a number of works based on mythological subjects, including
a wooden Daphne (unfinished) in 1939, which Giorcelli believes LZ saw (128).
#26
1892-1941
6 June 1941/ Poetry
(Sept. 1942)
Title: 1892-1941: The title obliquely refers
to the setting of the poem, which is the monument Henry Adams had built for the
grave of his wife in Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, D.C. and where he also
is buried. Marion (Clover) Adams committed suicide from depression in 1885, and
two years later Henry commissioned his friend, the prominent sculptor Augustus
Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907), to create a bronze sculpture, which shows a seated
figure almost entirely enfolded in a robe. The sculpture became popularly known
as “Grief,” although this was not a title given by Adams or Saint-Gaudens, and
Adams actually intended that the work express “acceptance, intellectually, of
the inevitable.” There are absolutely no markings on the gravesite to indicate
who is buried there, but on the backside of the granite block that serves as a
backdrop are two entwined wreathes, as mentioned at 91.14. The dates of LZ’s
title indicate the year when Adams first visited the monument, after years
traveling especially in the Pacific, and the year LZ visits the grave as
recounted in this poem (see note at 91.24).
There are two prior
descriptions of visits to this monument that stand behind LZ’s poem. The first
is Adams’ own description of his first visit in 1892 in The Education of Henry Adams (1918), from which LZ quotes at 91.24.
The second is by the historian, Carl Becker, that LZ quotes at length in the
final chapter of his MA thesis on Adams (1924).
From The
Education of Henry Adams, Chap. XXI: Twenty Years After:
“His first step, on returning to Washington, took him out to the cemetery known as Rock Creek, to
see the bronze figure which St. Gaudens had made for him in his absence.
Naturally every detail interested him; every line; every touch of the artist;
every change of light and shade; every point of relation; every possible doubt
of St. Gaudens's correctness of taste or feeling; so that, as the spring
approached, he was apt to stop there often to see what the figure had to tell
him that was new; but, in all that it had to say, he never once thought of
questioning what it meant. He supposed its meaning to be the one commonplace
about it—the oldest idea known to human thought. He knew that if he asked an
Asiatic its meaning, not a man, woman, or child from Cairo to Kamtchatka would
have needed more than a glance to reply. From the Egyptian Sphinx to the
Kamakura Daibuts; from Prometheus to Christ; from Michael Angelo to Shelley,
art had wrought on this eternal figure almost as though it had nothing else to
say. The interest of the figure was not in its meaning, but in the response of
the observer. As Adams sat there, numbers of people came, for the figure seemed
to have become a tourist fashion, and all wanted to know its meaning. Most took
it for a portrait-statue, and the remnant were vacant-minded in the absence of
a personal guide. None felt what would have been a nursery-instinct to a Hindu
baby or a Japanese jinricksha-runner. The only exceptions were the clergy, who
taught a lesson even deeper. One after another brought companions there, and,
apparently fascinated by their own reflection, broke out passionately against
the expression they felt in the figure of despair, of atheism, of denial. Like
the others, the priest saw only what he brought. Like all great artists, St.
Gaudens held up the mirror and no more. The American layman had lost sight of
ideals; the American priest had lost sight of faith. Both were more American
than the old, half-witted soldiers who denounced the wasting, on a mere grave,
of money which should have been given for drink.”
From Carl Becker as quoted in LZ’s “Henry Adams”; LZ does not identify the
source, but it is a review essay of The
Education of Henry Adams published in the American Historical Review (April 1919):
”Henry Adams lies
buried in Rock Creek Cemetery, in Washington. The casual visitor might perhaps
notice, on a slight elevation, a group of shrubs and small trees making a
circular enclosure. If he should step up into this concealed spot, he would see
on the opposite side a polished marble seat; and placing himself there he would
find himself facing a seated figure, done in bronze, loosely wrapped in a
mantle, which, covering the body and the head, throws into strong relief a face
of singular fascination. Whether man or woman, it would puzzle the observer to
say. The eyes are half closed, in
reverie rather than in sleep. The figure seems not to convey the sense either
of life or death, of joy or sorrow, of hope or despair. It has lived but life is done; it has
experienced all things, but is now oblivious to all; it has questioned, but
questions no more. The casual visitor
will perhaps approach the figure, looking for a symbol, a name, a date—some
revelation. There is none. The level ground, carpeted with dead leaves, gives
no indication of a grave beneath. It may be that the puzzled visitor will step
outside, walk around the enclosure, examine the marble shaft against which the
figure is placed; and, finding nothing there, return to the seat and look long
at the strange face. What does he make of it—this level spot, these shrubs,
this figure that speaks and yet is silent? Nothing—or what he will. Such was
life to Henry Adams, who lived long, and questioned seriously, and would not be
content with the dishonest or the facile answer” (Prep+
129-130).
91.25 “One’s
instinct abhors time”: from The
Education of Henry Adams, Chap. XV: Darwinism:
”By this time, in 1867 Adams had learned to know Shropshire familiarly, and it
was the part of his diplomatic education which he loved best. Like Catherine
Olney in ‘Northanger Abbey,’ he yearned for nothing so keenly as to feel at
home in a thirteenth-century Abbey, unless it were to haunt a fifteenth-century
Prior's House, and both these joys were his at Wenlock. […] The peculiar flavor
of the scenery has something to do with absence of evolution; it was better
marked in Egypt: it was felt wherever time-sequences became interchangeable. One's instinct abhors time. As one lay
on the slope of the Edge, looking sleepily through the summer haze towards
Shrewsbury or Cader Idris or Caer Caradoc or Uriconium, nothing suggested
sequence. The Roman road was twin to the railroad; Uriconium was well worth
Shrewsbury; Wenlock and Buildwas were far superior to Bridgnorth. The shepherds
of Caractacus or Offa, or the monks of Buildwas, had they approached where he
lay in the grass, would have taken him only for another and tamer variety of
Welsh thief. They would have seen little to surprise them in the modern
landscape unless it were the steam of a distant railway. One might mix up the
terms of time as one liked, or stuff the present anywhere into the past,
measuring time by Falstaff's Shrewsbury clock, without violent sense of wrong,
as one could do it on the Pacific Ocean; but the triumph of all was to look
south along the Edge to the abode of one's earliest ancestor and nearest
relative, the ganoid fish, whose name, according to Professor Huxley, was
Pteraspis, a cousin of the sturgeon, and whose kingdom, according to Sir
Roderick Murchison, was called Siluria. Life began and ended there. Behind that
horizon lay only the Cambrian, without vertebrates or any other organism except
a few shell-fish. On the further verge of the Cambrian rose the crystalline
rocks from which every trace of organic existence had been erased.”
#27
A madrigal for 3 voices
27-28 Feb. 1935/ Contemporary American Men Poets (1937)
Commentary
Conte, Joseph M. Unending Design: The Forms of Postmodern Poetry. Ithaca, NY:
Cornell UP, 1991. 153-154.
Title madrigal: a polyphonic song for
multiple voices using a secular text developed especially in Italy and England
during the Renaissance period. This poem was given the title, “Trio for
Workers: / (a madrigal) Unaccompanied” (Henderson 126) when published in Contemporary American Men Poets, ed.
Thomas Del Vecchio (NY: Henry Harrison, 1937).
#28
“The rains, the rains”
7 March 1939/ Calendar (1942)
92.5 Seasoned armies / Tested in defeat…:
this poem was written during the final collapse of the Republicans in the
Spanish Civil War: 26 Jan. 1939 Barcelona fell to Nationalist forces, 27 Feb.
France and Britain recognize Franco’s regime and 28 March the Nationalists took
control of Madrid.
#29
“Glad they were there”
22 Nov. 1938/ Calendar (1942)
Commentary
Dembo, L.S. "Louis
Zukofsky: Objectivist Poetics and the Quest for Form." American Literature 44.1 (March 1972):
74-96. Rpt. Terrell (1979): 292-293.
This poem is partially quoted at “A”-12.137.1f.
Notes (102-104): …e quelle anime liete…: Dante, Paradiso
Canto XXIV describes the sphere of the Fixed Stars and the dancing spiritual
figures of the Apostles. Since the entire passage contributes to LZ’s image, I
will quote and give a translation of it in full, putting in italics what LZ
quotes:
. . . e quelle anime liete
si fero spere sopra fissi poli,
fiammando forte a guisa di comete.
E come cerchi in tempra d'oriuoli
si giran sì, che 'l primo a chi pon mente
quieto pare, e l'ultimo che voli;
così quelle carole, differente-
mente danzando, de la sua ricchezza
mi facieno stimar, veloci e lente.
[…] and those glad souls
made themselves spheres upon fixed poles,
outflaming mightily like unto comets.
And even as wheels in harmony of clock-work
so turn that the first, to whoso noteth it,
seemeth still, and the last to fly,
so did those carols with their differing
whirl, or swift or slow,
make me deem of their riches. (trans. P.H. Wicksteed)
. . . it is a contradiction to say…:
as LZ states, this is from Marx’s Capital,
Chap. III on Money, section 2a, “The Metamorphosis of Commodities” (trans. Eden
& Cedar Paul). LZ also drew on this particular section of Capital in “Song—3/4 time” (CSP 58).
. . . general theory
of electromagnetic field…:
from H. A. Lorentz, The Theory of
Electrons And its Applications to the Phenomena of Light and Radiant Heat
(1915), based on lectures given at Columbia University in 1906. LZ paraphrases
and quotes the last remark in “Poetry / For My Son When He Can Read” (Prep+ 7).
. . . luce e sta verde: Cavalcanti’s
“Madrigal, “O cieco mondo, di lusinghe
pieno” (O blind world, full of false deceits), as found in EP’s Guido Cavalcanti Rime (1931), second
stanza:
Folle è colui che ti addrizza il freno,
Quando per men che nulla quel ben perde,
Che sovra ogn' altro Amor luce e sta
verde.
Fool is he who turns toward you,
Then for less than nothing loses that good
Which above every other Love shines and remains green.
(See also Bottom 135, where LZ quotes
the last five words and correlates particularly the mention of “green” with
both Shakespeare and Dante’s “Verdi, come
fogliett pur mo nate” (Green, like little leaves just born), which is
mentioned at 200).
#30
A marriage song for Florence and Harry
30-31 Dec. 1942
See remarks in 1 Feb. 1943 letter to WCW (WCW/LZ 314).
#31
“My nephew”
20-21 Oct. 1939
94.6 From his mother / My sister / He never saw
/ And my mother…: the nephew whose wedding LZ is celebrating is presumably
the son of his sister, Dora, who died in 1913 (born 1888), if not in childbirth
then shortly after, which is why the nephew never saw his mother. Chana Pruss
Zukofsky, LZ and Dora’s mother, died in 1927, therefore missing this wedding,
which is why their mother does not see the bride (or the bride’s mother) or
vice versa, depending on how one wishes to read the reference of “Hers.” In the
play Arise, arise a daughter-sister
who has prematurely died has a significant presence in the play, and at the end
of the first scene, the Father is heard off-stage talking to a young “nephew,”
who is the dead daughter’s son (3).
#32
“Even if love convey”
20-21 Feb. 1944
#33 “Drive, fast kisses”
12-13
Oct. 1939
Commentary
Dawson, Fielding. “Straight Lines.” The Dream/Thunder Road: Stories and Dreams
1955-1965. Los Angeles: Black Sparrow P, 1972. 111-114. Rpt. Krazy Kat & 76 More: Collected Stories
1950-1976 (Santa Barbara, CA: Black Sparrow P, 1982): 209-211.
#34 The Letter of Poor Birds
1-5 March
1944
96.13 Jerry:
Jerry Reisman (1913-2000), LZ’s close friend and collaborator during this time
(see 99.1,
102.3).
#35 Or a valentine
14 Feb.
1942/ Calendar (1942)
#36 “Strange”
1941
This poem
was first published in 14 Poets, 1 Artist
(Jargon 31) in 1958, a portfolio
dedicated to WCW.
#37 “The world autumn”
26 Nov.
1940
#38 “Belly Locks Shnooks Oakie”
7 April
1941
Commentary
Quartermain, Peter. "Thinking with the
Poem.” Golden Handcuffs Review 1.5
(Summer/Fall 2005). (Available on-line).
Cf. LZ’s
limerick, “Belly Lox Shnooks Oaky,” which apparently is an earlier or
alternative version of Anew 38; see
“Discarded Poems” in Terrell 159 (Quartermain).
#39 “One friend”
22 March
1942
Originally
intended to be used as final poem of Anew
and entitled “Endpiece” (Booth 129).
#40 Celia’s birthday poem
21 Jan.,
30 March 1942
Title Celia’s birthday was on 21 January.
#41 After Charles Sedley
14 Feb.
1943
Title Sir
Charles Sedley (c.1639–1701),
referring to his poem “To Celia,” from which LZ adopts his form including most
of the rhyme words, as well as the quoted line:
Not, Celia, that I juster am
Or better than the rest;
For I would change each hour, like them,
Were not my heart at rest.
But I am tied to very thee
By every thought I have;
Thy face I only care to see,
Thy heart I only crave.
All that in woman is adored
In thy dear self I find—
For the whole sex can but afford
The handsome and the kind.
Why then should I seek further store,
And still make love anew?
When change itself can give no more,
’Tis easy to be true.
#42 “You three:—my wife”
27 May
1943
99.1 You three…: the other
two friends, aside from CZ, are almost certainly Jerry Reisman, “the chief of
my friends” (see 96.13, 102.3) and WCW or possibly Lorine Niedecker, “the one
who still writes to me”—by this point the correspondence with EP had broken
down due to their political differences and the war. Much later, LZ would
include the opening of this poem in “A”-17, his tribute to WCW, although this
does not necessarily indicate the poem was originally addressed to him since
WCW expressed great enthusiasm for the poem, both in correspondence and in his
review of Anew, “A New Line Is a New
Measure” (The New Quarterly of Poetry
2.2, Winter 1947/48). This poem possibly takes off from Dante’s sonnet
addressed to Guido Cavalcanti, Guido, “ì
vorrei che tu e Lapo ed io” (Guido, I would that thou and Lapo and I were
taken by enchantment, and put in a vessel, that with every wind might sail to
your will and mine; trans. P.H. Wicksteed).
99.2 whom like Dante, / I call the chief of my
friends: see preceding note; LZ is alluding to Dante, La Vita Nuova, Chap. III, in which Dante remarks: “To this sonnet
answer was made by many and in divers senses, among which he was an answerer whom
I call the chief of my friends; and he then composed a sonnet which begins:
Thou didst behold to my seeming all excellency” (trans. Thomas Okey).
The friend Dante refers to is Guido Cavalcanti.
99.6 like the devil in the book of Job / Having come back from going to and
fro in the earth: see Job 1:8, 2:2.
100.9 ape
a dead poet…: Dante, whose
self-analysis of the psychology of love in La
Vita Nuova is the source for the next two stanzas. The “spirits of sight”
appear several times, but LZ probably has primarily in mind the description of
Dante’s first sight of Beatrice in Chap. II: “At that moment the animal spirit
which dwelleth in the high chamber to which all the spirits of sense carry
their perceptions, began to marvel much, and speaking especially to the spirits
of sight said these words: Apparuit jam
beautitudo vestra [Your beautitude has now appeared]. At that moment the
natural spirit which dwells in that part where our nourishment is distributed
began to weep, and weeping said these words: Heu miser: quia frequenter impedius ero deinceps [Alas, wretch,
often shall I be hindered from now on]. From thenceforward I say that Love held
lordship over my soul, which was so early bounden unto him, and he began to
hold over me so much assurance and so much mastery through the power which my
imagination gave to him, that it behoved me to do all his pleasure perfectly.”
The
equation of appetite with heart and reason with soul can be found in the
commentary to Chap. XXXVIII: “In this sonnet I make of me two parts according as
my thoughts were divided in twain. One part, to wit, appetite, I call heart;
the other, to wit, reason, I call soul, and I tell what one saith to the
other” (Trans. Thomas Okey).
101.23 Will she write the music I cannot…: CZ
was a musician and composer, who later wrote
musical settings for a selection
of LZ’s short poems in Autobiography,
as well as the score to Shakespeare’s Pericles
in volume 2 of Bottom. The painter
referred to in the following line should logically be Reisman, and Slate
mentions some drawings by Reisman of which LZ apparently thought highly (116).
102.4 Like that of Job’s scourge— / Do you know…:
refers to Job 36-37, where Elihu harangues Job and among a long catalogue of
questions concerning God’s powers, rhetorically asks Job at 37:17 if he knows
“How thy garments are warm, when he quieteth the earth by the south wind?”
#43
To my baby Paul
23 Oct. 1943
This poem was written the day after the birth of
PZ (Dinty).
102.1 Guido: = Guido Cavalcanti (c.
1255-1300), Italian poet and friend of Dante. Although in an entirely different
mood, this poem takes off from the opening of Cavalcanti’s Ballata, “Perch’io non spero de tornar già mai,” which LZ used as the formal template for
“A”-11. EP translates the opening lines of Cavalcanti’s poem: “Because no hope
is left me, Ballatteta, / Of return to Tuscany, / Light-foot go thou some fleet
way / Unto my Lady straightway […]” (Translations
121).
102.3 Jerry: = Jerry Reisman; see 96.13,
99.1.
102.6 Chianti: a dry red wine from the
Chianti region of Tuscany, just south of Florence.
