pound – zukofsky – niedecker… a reading

niedecker:

My friend tree
I sawed you down
but I must attend
an older friend
the sun


pound:
1. direct treatment of the thing
2. to use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation
3. to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase

pound:
an ‘Image’ is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time

niedecker:

Well, spring overflows the land,
floods floor, pump, wash machine
of the woman moored to this low shore by deafness.
…
pound:
it is better to present one Image in a lifetime than to produce voluminous works

pound:
use no superfluous word, no adjective which does not reveal something


niedecker:
…
you water my worms
you patch my boot
with your mending kit
nothing in it
but my hand
pound:
do in fear of abstractions

pound:
use no ornament or good ornament

niedecker:
…
I worked the print shop
right down among em
the folk from whom all poetry flows
and dreadfully much else
…
What would they say if they knew
I sit for two months on six lines
of poetry?

pound:
there is in the best verse a sort of residue of sound which remains in the ear of the hearer

pound:
the experimental demonstrations of one man may save the time of many

niedecker:

Hear
where her snow-grave is
the You
ah you
of mourning doves

pound:
it will not try to seem forcible by rhetorical din, and luxurious riot. we will have fewer painted adjectives impeding the shock and stroke of it. I want it so, austere, direct, free from emotional slither

niedecker:

How white the gulls
in grey weather
Soon April
the little
yellows

zukofsky:
the lens bringing the rays from an object to a focus
that which is aimed at
desire for what is objectively perfect
inextricably the direction of historic and contemporary particulars

niedecker:

Popcorn-can cover
screwed to the wall
over a hole
so the cold
can’t mouse in

zukofsky:
that historic and contemporary particulars may mean a thing or things as well as an event or a chain of events

niedecker:

Lights, lifts
parts nicely opposed
this white
lice lithe
pink bird

zukofsky:
this rested totality may be called objectification


niedecker:

July, waxwings
on the berries
have dyed red
the dead
branch

zukofsky:
the implications are that a critic began as a poet, and that as a poet he had implicitly to be a critic

niedecker:

I’ve been away from poetry
many months

and now I must rake leaves
with nothing blowing

between your house
and mine

zukofsky:
a poem as an object…experienced…perfect rest…theologically perhaps… like the ineffable…the context…dealing with a world outside, inextricably the direction of historic and contemporary particulars…desire for what is objectively perfect…context based on a world…this object in process…the poem as a job…

niedecker:

My life is hung up
in the flood
a wave-blurred
portrait

Don’t fall in love
with this face—
it no longer exists
in water
we cannot fish

zukofsky:
a context associated with ‘musical’ shape

niedecker:

Now in one year
a book published
and plumbing—
took a lifetime
to weep
a deep
trickle

zukofsky:
intention must be distinguished from accomplishment which resolves the complexity of detail into a single object

niedecker:
…
We stayed till the stamens trembled

zukofsky:
(quotes contemporary American poet) a machine made of words


niedecker:
…
Leave me the land
Scratch out: the land

May prose and property both die out
and leave me peace




sources:
Ezra Pound, “A Retrospect”
Louis Zukofsky, “An Objective” and “A Statement for Poetry”
Lorine Niedecker, The Granite Pail, Ed. Cid Corman, 1996