I’ve spent the last two weeks getting serious about my dissertation. It’s been two years now since I successfully completed my prelim exams, and I have almost nothing to show for that time, dissertation-wise. It’s tremendously embarrassing, and even a little painful. By getting serious, I mean that I’ve been diving into the primary sources for my dissertation project, the poetry of a cluster of really wonderful poets (and people) frequently referred to as “The Objectivists”: Charles Reznikoff, Louis Zukofsky, George Oppen, Carl Rakosi, Basil Bunting, and Lorine Niedecker. William Carlos Williams was associated with the Objectivists for a time, and many scholars refer to a period of his poetry as “Objectivist,” but he is not always considered part of the core group by literary historians.
[caption id=“attachment_2182” align=“alignright” width=“793”] Carl Rakosi, reading his poetry for a 1971 radio broadcast produced by Charles Amirkhanian.[/caption]
Reading their writing has energized me considerably, and motivated me to want to both write more of my own poetry and to get working on a dissertation that explores, elucidates, and even champions their impressive poetry. Over the next few weeks, I want to post little samples of the kind of poetry that each of the major Objectivists wrote, so that you too can grow to appreciate and love their work. If you love their poems, please buy the books that their work is contained in—all of the Objectivists except Carl Rakosi have beautiful editions of their collected work published in the past decade, so it is accessible, in print, and there for the enjoyment.
To start, here’s a small taste of Carl Rakosi, two poems about animals, and two other short lyrics: “No One Talks About This”
They go in different ways. One hog is stationed at the far end of the pen to decoy the others, the hammer knocks the cow to his knees, the sheep goes gentle and unsuspecting. Then the chain is locked around the hind leg and the floor descends from under them. Head down they hang. The great drum turns the helpless objects and conveys them slowly to the butcher waiting at his station. The sheep is stabbed behind the ear.
Gentle sheep, I am powerless to mitigate your sorrow. Men no longer weep by the rivers of Babylon but I will speak for you. If I forget you, may my eyes lose their Jerusalem.
—from Ere-Voice (1967)
“Poem”
The ants came to investigate the dead bull snake, nibbled at the viscera and hurried off with full mouths waving wild antennae.
Moths alighted, beetles swarmed, flies buzzed in the stomach.
Three crows tugged and tore and flew off to the oak tree with the skin.
In every house men, women and children were chewing beef.
Who was it said “The wonder of the world is its comprehensibility”?
“Strictly Iowa”
They were married so long they were worn down to the same element, two factual blue eyes and an open freckled face neither liberal nor conservative like the Revolutionary farmer and as sparing with an adjective as a short-haired dog.
“Grace Note”
Since the world has been my tuning fork I must have struck a note myself from time to time which pays my debt with honest affection undivided between head and spring.