Louis Zukofsky - Legacy

Legacy

Despite the attention Objectivism received as a major poetic movement of the 1930s, Zukofsky’s own work never achieved much recognition outside literary circles since his poetry was seen as obscure, too experimental, and dryly intellectual. Zukofsky, along with the other Objectivists, was rediscovered by the Black Mountain and Beat poets in the 1960s and 1970s. Largely responsible here was the poet and editor Cid Corman who published Zukofsky's work and critical comments on it in his magazine Origin and through Origin Press from the late 1950s onward. In the 1970s, Zukofsky was a major influence on many of the Language poets, particularly in their formalism.

The Zukofsky revival continued into the twenty-first century. In 2000 Wesleyan University Press, honoring Zukofsky's birth in 1904, began publishing The Wesleyan Centennial Edition of the Complete Critical Writings of Louis Zukofsky. Editions of "A" continue to be published and sell quickly; the Chicago Review (Winter 2004/5) devoted an issue to Zukofsky; his correspondence with William Carlos Williams was published in 2003. In 2007, Shoemaker & Hoard published Mark Scroggins' The Poem of a Life: A Biography of Louis Zukofsky, a full-length analysis of the poet's career derived from extensive archival research and interviews with Zukofsky's friends, acquaintances, and family members.

In 2009, Louis Zukofsky's son Paul Zukofsky, the owner of Zukofsky's copyrights, wrote an open letter telling graduate students and scholars that "In general, as a matter of principle, and for your own well-being, I urge you to not work on Louis Zukofsky, and prefer that you do not." In the letter, Paul Zukofsky required that graduate students ask him for permission to quote from his father's works in their dissertations (an unusual practice), and made it clear that he might withhold such permission. Quoting from e. e. cummings (presumably without permission), he indicated that he believed that scholars write chiefly from self-interest and that their claims that their scholarship would help enhance Louis Zukofsky's artistic legacy were offensive:

I can perhaps understand your misguided interest in literature, music, art, etc. I would be suspicious of your interest in Louis Zukofsky, but might eventually accept it. I can applaud your desire to obtain a job, any job, although why in your chosen so-called profession is quite beyond me; but one line you may not cross i.e. never never ever tell me that your work is to be valued by me because it promotes my father. Doing that will earn my life-long permanent enmity. Your self-interest(s) I may understand, perhaps even agree with; but beyond that, in the words of e.e.cummings quoting Olaf: “there is some s I will not eat”.

Paul Zukofsky wrote in the letter that his chief concern was to derive income from his possession of copyrights in his father's work, not to censor what might be said, but it might well be the case that the unusual difficulty and expense of writing about Louis Zukofsky will affect the poet's legacy.