Louis Zukofsky

Louis Zukofsky was born in New Your of Lithuanian Jewish parents and grew up speaking Yiddish. In 1924, he graduates with a Master's degree in English from Columbia University. His early poetry was promoted by Ezra Pound.

In his early years, Zukofsky was a committed Marxist, but his sense that experimental work such as his own, added to his own sense of the importance of his private, domestic life, caused him to move away from the Communist Party from the early 1930s.

Zukofsky was one of the founders of the Objectivist group of poets and the Objectivist Press, along with Charles Reznikoff and George Oppen. Other poets associated with this group inclused William Carlos Williams, Basil Bunting, Lorine Niedecker, Carl Rakosi, and Kenneth Rexroth.

His major work was the long poem A, which he began in 1927 and was to work on for the rest of his life. The extensive use of music in this work reflects the importance of Zukofsky's collaborations with his wife Celia, a professional musician. Their son Paul Zukofsky is a noted violin player.

Having suffered critical neglect for most of his career, Zukofsky, along with the other Objectivists, was rediscovered by the Beats and other experimental poets in the 1960s and 1970s. The complete A was at the printers when the poet died in 1978.

External Link

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/s_z/zukofsky/zukofsky.htm