Louis Zukofsky > Quotes

“Infinite is a meaningless word: except – it states / The mind is capable of performing / an endless process of addition.”
― Louis Zukofsky

“It was a pity that people did not risk enough to speak out in behalf of one another's happiness and their own.
”
― Louis Zukofsky, Collected Fiction

“The more the words of others impressed him with their factual content, the more he felt he must wait for his own facts before being tempted into words.”
― Louis Zukofsky, Collected Fiction

“I suppose looking back on life, anyone's life, it amounts to this – everything that diverges from one's aim is a bloody waste of time, except as respite making you less lonely.”
― Louis Zukofsky, Collected Fiction

“This story was a story of our time. And a writer's attempts not to fathom his time amount but to sounding his mind in it.”
― Louis Zukofsky, Collected Fiction

“A
Round of fiddles playing Bach.”
― Louis Zukofsky, “A”

“This time it was the sentence opening the last part of a story I had worked on for months: a sentence as is often worked off paper first. The pace of narrative and interest in character do not readily help the writer's hand to set down a sentence of that order. For though characters must take things in their own stride – somewhere in his story the writer cannot hold back this sentence that judges them. He wants it unobtrusive to his pace and the characters that caused him to write. The difficulty is to judge without seeming to be there, with a finality in the words that will make them casual and part of the story itself, except perhaps to another age.”
― Louis Zukofsky, Collected Fiction

“River that must turn full after I stop dying
Song, my song, raise grief to music
Light as my loves' thought, the few sick
So sick of wrangling: thus weeping,
Sounds of light, stay in her keeping
And my son's face - this much for honor.”
― Louis Zukofsky, “A”

“May is, Airs wreathe (times) : and they mirror: plus
Silence supports my pretension . . the parts
Ascend a tone, repeating, (tin ears) thus
(Listen) move past Jesus ratted in starch;
My contention . . that the slight disregards
My costs: Recorders: Fa - as what wind blew
Tossed coins in herrings heads, what journey thru
Mi et Mi Fa . . tota Musica, dearth
Such as voice courting voice has such value
Labor light lights in air, in earth, on earth”
― Louis Zukofsky, “A”

“5 voices: Handel's harpsichord pieces + T (thought) + D (drama) + S (story) + P (poem)

T: And it is possible in imagination/// to divorce speech of all graphic elements,/// to let it become a movement of sounds.
D: I came thru there (points finger downward, moves his head negatively from side to side) My mother hit her mother?/// (falls to the floor in a fit)/// (rises, limp,)
S: This story was a story of our time./// And a writer's attempts not to fathom his time/// amount but to sounding his mind in it.
P: Blest / infinite things / /// So many / Which /// confuse imagination / Thru its weakness,”
― Louis Zukofsky, "A"-24