USA: Poetry: Louis Zukofsky

Overview

Born in 1904, and first published by Ezra Pound in 1927, Louis Zukosky is the poet whose name is associated with the term objectivists. Although never widely known as a poet, his work as well as his writings on poetry have served as an example and exerted an influence over an entire generation of American poets. He has lived most of his life in Brooklyn Heights. He has taught until recently at the Polytechnic Institute in Brooklyn, and earlier at San Francisco State, Colgate, Queens College, and the University of Wisconsin. I was born young into a world that was already very old, says Zukofsky. Words for me are solid, he adds, even though sometimes they liquefy and sometimes they aerify. His readings in this episode range from his first published poem titled, A Poem Beginning The, to his monumental work still in progress, titled simple A, as well as his translations from Cavalcanti and Catullus.