Louis Zukofsky: Selected Poems (American Poets Project)

This book came out the EXACT MONTH I happened to be reading Zukofsky: Man and Poet, a collection of appreciations and essays assembled just after his death in 1979. What's sad is that the essays all start from the assumption that Zukofsky is almost totally unknown except among poets, a fact that caused him some bitterness in his final years. He died just before his masterpiece, "A," came out in a single edition from UC Press. Flash forward a generation to this handsome Library of America edition. The pros will quibble over the sense of excerpting Zukofsky, which Z. himself tried to prevent in his lifetime. But it's hard to see this book as anything less than a vindication of the quiet, steady devotion Zukofsky showed to poetry over his productive life. Charles Bernstein, who's about the best ambassador the avant-garde's got to the publishing mainstream, is a great choice for the project: his selections are sympathetic and smart, aware of the larger work while giving you enough tantalizing bits to satisfy a healthy curiosity. I doubt Zukofsky's work has ever reached as broad an audience as it will here: it may be just the end run around the growing Zukofsky industry his work needs to find fresh readers. The poems deserve it, and somehow I think he'd be tickled pink to know this is out there.