Complete Short Poetry

Louis Zukofsky was a writer's writer. Largely ignored by the general reading public, he counted Kenneth Rexroth and William Carlos Williams among his admirers, and the Beloit Literary Journal insists that his poems are "essential for anyone hoping to understand the whole modern movement, especially the Objectivist branch." This complete collection of Zukofsky's short poems gives readers a good sense of what all the fuss was about. Zukofsky's great gift was in finding the words to let the moment tell itself, as in "A Song for the Year's End": "Daughter of music / and her sweet son / so that none rule / the dew to his own hurt / with the year's last sigh / awake / the starry sky and bird." The visuals create a collage effect, so that the poem's rhythms move the same way one's eyes move in viewing a collage: from details to the overall impression and back, in a continuous cycle. The collection of pieces based on various flowers is especially beautiful and melodic.