“Objectivists” 1927-1934 Section 18 - “A” Contents

Notes - Section 18 - “A”

1 Symposium (January 1931), 74.

2 Booth, A Catalogue, p. 201, no. Eba; letter received from Research Librarian Ellen S. Dunlap, 31 July 1980.

3 Dial, 85, 1 (July 1928), 16-20.

4 Pound, Letter to Zukofsky, 28 October 1930, Montemora, 8 (1981), 168-169. Pound/Zukofsky, pp. 54-58, No. 27. See Section 13.

5 Dial (July 1928), 8.

6 Pound, Translations, pp. 18, 23, 24. My phrase “of the sensations” paraphrases Pound’s continuation: “ . . . a true description, whether it be of the pain itself or of the apathy that comes when the emotions and possibilities are exhausted, or of that stranger state when the feeling by its intensity surpasses our powers of bearing and we seem to stand aside and watch it surging across some thing or being with whom we are no longer identified.”

7 See “Cavalcanti,” Literary Essays, p. 200.

8 Literary Essays, p. 12.

9 Dial (July 1928), 15.

10 Zukofsky, First Half of “A”-9 (New York: privately printed, 1940), pp. 37, 29-36. Literary Essays, pp. 155-157, and “Canto XXVI.” Paideuma (Winter 1978), 409-411.

11 Celia Zukofsky, A Bibliography of Louis Zukofsky, p. 49.

12 Zukofsky, Letter to Pound, 18 September 1929, Yale.

13 An “Objectivists” Anthology, p. 10.

14 Symposium (January 1931), 82.

15 An “Objectivists” Anthology, p. 133; “A”, p. 22.

16 An “Objectivists” Anthology, p. 139; this passage was omitted from the final version.

17 An “Objectivists” Anthology, pp. 151-152; In “A”, p. 38, which omits some of this, the transition between the sixth and seventh movements is more abrupt.

18 Dial (July 1928), 16.

19 Instigations, p. 291.

20 Zukofsky, Letter to Monroe, 12 October 1930, Poetry Papers, 1912-1936, Department of Special Collections, University of Chicago Library, box 41, folder 14. See Section 13.

21 An “Objectivists” Anthology, p. 24.

22 Dial (July 1928), 15.

23 An “Objectivists” Anthology, p. 116; “A”, p. 4. “A Programme, and the Maladministered Lyric,” New Age (7 March 1918), 277-378; Antheil and the Treatise on Harmony, p. 80; Ezra Pound and Music: The Complete Criticism, ed. R. Murray Schafer (New York: New Directions, 1979), p. 86.

24 Zukofsky, Letter to Pound, 19 August 1930, Montemora (1981), 164.

25 Zukofsky, Letter to Pound, 8 September 1930, Yale. Pound/Zukofsky, pp. 39-43, No. 22.

26 Zukofsky, Letter to Pound, 7 December 1931, Yale. Pound/Zukofsky, pp. 107-114, No. 43.

27 Pound, Letter to Zukofsky, 27 November 1930, Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin. Montemora, 8 (1981), 175-176.

28 Zukofsky, Letter to Pound, 12 December 1928, Yale. Pound/Zukofsky, pp. 23-24, No. 10.

29 Zukofsky, Letter to Pound, 12 December 1930, Yale. Montemora, 8 (1981), 177-180. Instigations included a version of “Canto I”; Lustra with Earlier Poems (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1917) included “Cantos II, II, and I [correction needed: I, II, and III?], according to Gallup, all three differing radically from the eventual final texts”; Poems 1918-1921 included “Cantos V and VI” (radically different) and “VI” (slightly different).

30 Joyce was an early major influence on Zukofsky. The final version of Zukofsky’s “American Poetry 1920-1930” begins: “The brain and conscience of Joyce are that of his literary generation” (Prepositions, p. 137), and, interviewed by Richard O. Moore for the National Education Television production in their USA: Poetry series, Zukofsky named Joyce before Pound and Williams as the first writer to influence him and said he admired Joyce for what Henry James called “the solidity of specifications.”

31 Compare “A”, pp. 6-7 with The Cantos, p. 10.

32 Zukofsky, Letter to Pound, 12 November 1932, Yale.

33 Pagany, 1, 4 (October-December 1930), 23.

34 Dial (July 1928), 16-20. See “A”, pp. 2-3.

35 Zukofsky, Letter to Pound, 12 December 1930, Montemora (1981), 177-180. Williams, “Conversation as Design,” discussed in Section 10, is closer to Zukofsky’s achievement.

36 “A”, p. 4.

37 Pound, Letter to Zukofsky, 25 December 1930, Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin. Pound/Zukofsky, pp. 84-86, No. 34.

38 Pound, Letter to Zukofsky, 22 November 1931, Yale. Pound/Zukofsky, p. 105, No. 42.

39 Zukofsky, Letter to Pound, 7 December 1931, Yale. Pound/Zukofsky, pp. 107-114, No. 43.

40 Pound, Letter to Zukofsky, 2 January 1932, Yale.

41 Pound, Letter to Zukofsky, 22 December 1931, Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin. Pound/Zukofsky, pp. 123-124, No. 46.

42 Zukofsky, Letter to Pound, 7 January 1932, Yale, Pound/Zukofsky, pp. 107-114, No. 43. See also Zukofsky, Letter to Pound, 7 December 1931, in which Zukofsky claimed “A” was straightforwardly clear, adhering nearly completely to “A Few Don’ts,” except for the Yehoash translations and the final passages (not the one about Bach) of “A”-4.

43 Zukofsky, Letter to Pound, 7 December 1931, Yale. Pound/Zukofsky, pp. 107-114, No. 43.

44 An “Objectivists” Anthology, p. 132; “A”, p. 21.

45 An “Objectivists” Anthology, p. 139; “A”, p. 27.

46 An “Objectivists” Anthology, p. 130; “A”, p. 18 (where the parenthetical is closed after “trefoil”).

47 An “Objectivists” Anthology, p. 134; “A”, pp. 22-23.

48 Richard Wilhelm, C. J. Jung, The Secret of the Golden Flower: A Chinese Book of Life, trans. Cary F. Baynes (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1962).

49 An “Objectivists” Anthology, p. 119; “A”, p. 7. See also An “Objectivists” Anthology, pp. 117, 119-120, 123, 129, 130; “A”, pp. 4, 8, 11, 17, 18. The flower imagery is further linked to the sea imagery.

50 An “Objectivists” Anthology, pp. 129, 134; “A”, pp. 17, 23.

51 An “Objectivists” Anthology, p. 129; “A”, p. 17 (where the dialogue is clarified).

52 Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the Nineteen-Twenties (1931; rpt. New York: Harper and Row, 1964), pp. 83-84.

53 See especially An “Objectivists” Anthology; “A”, p. 6.

54 An “Objectivists” Anthology, p. 136; “A”, p. 24.

55 An “Objectivists” Anthology, p. 153; “A”, p. 40.

56 Pound, Letter to Homer L. Pound, 11 April 1927, Selected Letters, p. 210, No. 222. See also Pound, Letter to Drummond, 18 February 1932, Selected Letters, p. 239, No. 253: “There are only three main planes. . . . Best div. prob. the permanent, the recurrent, the casual.”

57 W. B. Yeats, “A Packet for Ezra Pound,” dated March and October 1928, A Vision (1938; rpt. New York: Macmillan, 1956), pp. 4-5.

58 The Cantos, p. 15.