num_pages: 304
description: Scroggins provides a provocative and advanced introduction to thethought and writing of Louis Zukofsky, aptly described as one of the "firstpostmodernists." Poet, translator, and editor, Louis Zukofsky was born in New York Cityin 1904. Raised to speak first Yiddish and then English, he was fascinatedby language from an early age. This deep preoccupation with language--itsmusicality, complex constructions, and fluid meaning--later became a keycomponent in the development of his poetry. Friend to William Carlos Williams,Marianne Moore, and Ezra Pound, mentor to Robert Creeley and influenceon many of the Language Movement poets, Zukofsky and his work stand squarelyat the center of American poetry's transition from modernism to postmodernism. Mark Scroggins advances thoughtful readings of Zukofsky's key criticalessays, a wide variety of his shorter poems, and his "poem of a life", "A". He carefully situates Zukofsky within his literary and historicalcontexts, examining his relationship to Pound, his 1930s Marxist politics,and his sense of himself as a Jewish modernist poet. Scroggins also placesZukofsky within an ongoing tradition of American poetry, including thework of Wallace Stevens, Charles Bernstein, Ronald Johnson, Michael Palmer,and John Taggart.
language: English
title: Upper Limit Music: The Writing of Louis Zukofsky
titlecomplete: Upper Limit Music: The Writing of Louis Zukofsky
genres: Poetry
ratings_count: 16
publisher: University Alabama Press