Present Minute, Only Minute
My grandmother in her old age Sold barley and groats at a stall In the market place. She did not measure her cereal More carefully Than I must minutes. — The Poems Of Charles Reznikoff:…
Tag: Charles Reznikoff
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…
Poem of the Week by Charles Reznikoff
I went to my grandfather’s to say good-bye:I was going away to a school out West.As I came in,My grandfather turned from the window at which he sat(sick, skin yellow, eyes bleary–but his hair still…
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…
The Pithy, the Necessary, the Clear, and the Plain
Charles Reznikoff: Man and Poet, edited by Milton Hindus National Poetry Foundation, University of Maine at Orono, 1984 Poetry presents the thing in order to convey the feeling. It should be precise about the thing…
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…
A Poem, a History, a Novel
This fall Dianne, Lynette and I are reading the following books: