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 possibly
refers to the popular practice of “word painting” in Renaissance madrigals. An
etymological remark on air or ayre in Bottom is suggestive: “[…] in Shakespeare
and the French of his time, mien, demeanour, tune—affected by Italian aria, meant ‘a looke
. . . a tune’ (Florio)” (139).
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 or the printer 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.
Anew
8-10, written over two days, are clearly interrelated; see notes to #9.
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.
81.3 a god of midday: see Ra in preceding
poem.
81.6 so
overweening: this phrase appears in EP’s 1928 translation of Cavalcanti, Donna mi preigha, which so fascinated both poets, particularly
at this time: “Because a lady asks me, I would tell / Of an affect that comes
often and is fell / And is so overweening: Love by name. […].”
81.8 see 2
as a bird: see line 11 of preceding poem.
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”
16-17 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.
For some further remarks on technical references by the engineer Aryanil Mukherjee see
here.
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 in Oct. 1943a few
months before this poem was composed.
#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 is from an Imperial Edict issued by the Japanese Emperor Hirohito (1901-1989) on the occasion of the signing of the
Tripartite Pact with Hitler and Mussolini in Sept. 1940 (Quartermain
212) and reported in the New York Times for 28 Sept. 1940: “Hirohito Rescript”: “To enhance justice on earth and to make the
world one household is the great injunction bequeathed by our imperial
ancestors which we take to heart day and night. In the stupendous crisis
now confronting the world it appears that there will be an aggravation of war
and confusion and incalculable disasters will be inflicted upon mankind. We fervently
hope for a cessation of disturbances and hope a restoration of peace will be realized
as swiftly as possible. Accordingly we commanded our government to deliberate
on the matter of mutual assistance and cooperation with the governments of Germany and Italy, which share the views and
aspirations of our empire. […] We are deeply gratified that a pact has been
concluded between these three powers. The task of enabling each nation to find
its proper place
and all individuals to live in peace and security is one of great magnitude,
unparalleled in history.”
#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 and A Midsummer Night’s Dream V.i. Also relevant is the discussion of the word “atomies”
in Shakespeare, usually glossed as meaning “motes,” as related to Lucretius in Bottom
86-89. 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 World War II (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 three female figures, or perhaps a single figure in three
aspects, 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) and apparently there are 5 copies of the
work; photos of this and other Zadkine sculptures can
be found in Giorcelli and here.
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 on June 1 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; LZ quotes this
paragraph in “Henry Adams” (Prep+
109):
“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).
91.1 To be moved
comes of want…: probably LZ is adapting Dante here, who he quotes in
“Modern Times”: “’Everything that moves, moves for the sake of something which
it has not, and which is the goal of its motion; … Everything that moves, then,
has some defect, and does not grasp its whole being at once’ (Letter to Can
Grande, 26)” (Prep+ 63).
91.24 “the cemetery known as Rock Creek”: see quotation from The Education of Henry Adams above.
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). Florence Feigenblum was the daughter of LZ’s
elder brother Morris Ephraim Zukowsky.
#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 Moe E. Pruss, 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 (lines 7-8) (Scroggins Bio
173, 508). 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. The significant
presence of La Vita Nuova (The New Life) here
and elsewhere in this poem and of Dante throughout this volume relates to the
title Anew.
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.
102.4 place her there who has never seen a /
vineyard—: in manuscript, “her” reads “Sophie,” presumably CZ’s younger
sister (Scroggins Bio 517).
102.6 Chianti: a dry red wine from the
Chianti region of Tuscany, just south of Florence.
