Poetry’s upper limit

Abstract

Louis Zukofsky’s poetic work has always been noted for its difficulty. Throughout his career, he kept in mind the principles created by Ezra Pound, and he made music the focus of his poems. This focus is all the more visible in his major work “A”. Composed of 24 movements, “A” is the culmination of its author’s capabilities. There, Zukofsky famously expressed his poetic views using the integral speech ∫ music where speech and music are the limits defining the interval in which poetry is bound. “A”-24, the poem’s last movement, is an illustration of Zukofsky’s will to create a musical poetry. Written with the help of his wife, Celia, and otherwise titled L.Z. Masque, the poem is composed of four different lines of text, all quotations from works by Zukofsky. Marked T for thoughts, D for Drama, S for story, P for poetry, Zukofsky’s different works are there set to music, using Handel’s Harpsichord Pieces. The superimposition of these different works leads to a shift in the perception of the poetic work. In this radical challenge to the practice of reading, Zukofsky’s movement pushes poetry to the limit, one that needs to be questioned.