Autobiography

by Louis Zukofsky

From front But the bare facts Strange To reach that age, remember a tide And full for a time be young.

Genres: Poetry

Hardcover

Published January 1, 1970

About the author

Louis Zukofsky was one of the most important second-generation American modernist poets. He was co-founder and primary theorist of the Objectivist group of poets and was to be an important influence on subsequent generations of poets in America and abroad.

Reviews

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a poet I have always felt that the work says all there needs to be said of one's life.

- L.Z.

C.Z.
music for poems by
Louis Zukofsky

the poem . . . the completed action of one writing words to be set to music. For all the good sense one must owe to Dante, these twenty-two settings to eighteen poems ("Song 8" from 55 has two versions, "Song 29" from Anew three, and "que j'ay dit devant" again two) have always acted to complete the words for me. I find some notes intended for comment at a reading, going back some twenty years, which point to the final intention of the words: "madrigal," "plain chant," "organum," "Adoration" (no doubt in the medieval sense), "for one voice," "for several" and so on. The composer set the words to the "forms" I asked for - to which I had perhaps no right, unable to compose them myself; but in following my wish or whim she also did something else - showing me that apart from my impositions on my words and her, the words had potentially their own tunes which she followed even more carefully to complete for me.

- L.Z., February 17, 1962

[Louis Cabri]

If anyone knows of a recorded performance of these scores, I would like very much to learn of it. Thank you.