Saturday, May 20, 2006

I forgot to mention seeing Zukofsky's selected, edited by Charles Bernstein. forgive me, but it looks sparse. it's a wee frail hardback, with a design suggesting those Best-Loved Poems anthologies that you're supposed to carry around in your pocket while you wander lonely as a. all right, that's one thing. the idea of such a thin selection just didn't ring well. Ron Silliman has divagated lengthily on the subject of selecting Zukofsky, and he came away with about 3 bits missing from the oeuvre. like Olson, and in fact a lot of modernists, you don't think so much of individual poems but how the whole shit thinks. context matters with these writers. so for such writers, I say all or nothing. I suppose what Bernstein created fits neatly in a syllabus, and it amounts to another star on his cv. I think a more useful idea would be to republish Zukofsky's books as he prepared them. I know that when a poet dies, his/her work comes under a different understanding, that of oeuvre, and how the pieces fit together becoems a latter of editorial precision regarding date of composition or whatsis. Blackburn's collected went this way, with everything shifted to chronological order. Notley goes elsewise as best she can with Berrigan's collected, even repeating poems that B repeated in publication. I'm not that bothered by Blackburn's collected, but I can see the burn there. Z's selected made it to the end of aisle display, which was tragically weak (I don't recall seeing the 50th anniversary of Howl out there, for intance), and looked perfectly modest and unassuming. I don't think you can breed a new generation of Zukofsky lovers by giving them dainty samples. throw Big Blue in their path and perhaps they'll pick it up as they pick themselves up. or see if a PlayStation version can be made...

2 comments:

shanna said...

the endcap displays at b&n (and other chains) are paid placements, mostly. occasionally you will find a spot or two that the section manager has actually curated but generally there is a spreadshit from the main office dictating what is to be featured. it comes packed in the box with the books, like a kit. (used to work there.)

shanna said...

ha ha--i meant spreadshEEt!