Szym and Rez (NPM, 4.6.22)

Wislawa SzymborskaABC I’ll never find out nowWhat A. thought of me.If B. ever forgave me in the end.Why C. pretended everything was fine.What part D. played in E.’s silence.What F. had been expecting, if anything.Why…

A Little Encouragement, Friday Morning

Three of you four gayOne married to Zionist royalty  Whitman was awesomeWrote no-big-deal stuff too Reznikoff was superbYet suffered anonymity Ginsberg was world-influentialScribbled drivel sometimes You can (I know) write verse with vervePrompt a tear,…

Ho-hum

William Carlos Williams/Selected Poems New Directions, 1968 See Also Reznikoff, Complete Poems;  Thursday 26 May 2011 Someone please tell me the big deal about WCW, I’m halfway through this book and am not astounded, inspired,…

Huzzah!/2

Make Lists Not War Dear Cami, One index of a profitable reading experience may very well be in the marginalia we make. For instance, I read Ed Sanders’ collection of poetry Let’s Not Keep Fighting…

Minutes & Plans & Moons

I first came to the work of Charles Reznikoff in 2008 when I read his terse “poems” in Holocaust. He had read thousands of pages of war crimes trials transcripts to produce condensed, jarring, essential…

A Feat of Reading and Writing

1. [T]he sheer enormity of what took place between 1933 and 1945 beggars our powers of description and understanding. The more one studies this period and its excesses, the more one must conclude that for…

Note to Cami on Reznikoff

I read Reznikoff in summer of 2010 As much as I could find Used, at Amazon By him, about him I like his spare style That was the year I was generating a piece a…