An extended critical essay on the work of poet Charles Reznikoff. The son of Russian garment workers, Charles Reznikoff (1894-1976) was a blood-and-bone New Yorker, a collector of images and stories who walked the city from Bronx to Battery and breathed the soul of the Jewish immigrant experience into a lifetime of poetry.
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An extended critical essay on the work of poet Charles Reznikoff. The son of Russian garment workers, Charles Reznikoff (1894-1976) was a blood-and-bone New Yorker, a collector of images and stories who walked the city from Bronx to Battery and breathed the soul of the Jewish immigrant experience into a lifetime of poetry.
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Like New. First Edition, First Printing. Not price-clipped ($10.00 price intact on paper label laid in). Published by Black Sparrow Press, 1977. Octavo. Brown cloth over yellow pictorial boards stamped in blue and pink. Book is like new with no writing. Sharp corners and spine straight. Publisher's acetate jacket is like new. 70 pages. ISBN: 0-87685-366-1. 100% positive feedback. 30 day money back guarantee. NEXT DAY SHIPPING! Excellent customer service. Please email with any questions or if you would like a photo. All books packed carefully and ships with free delivery confirmation/tracking. All books come with free bookmarks. Ships from Sag Harbor, New York.
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Both the subject and the author of this rare little book deserve to be remembered. The author, Milton Hindus,(1916-1988) was one of the original 13 professors that founded Brandeis University in 1948. He taught at Brandeis until his retirement in 1981. Hindus originally made his reputation with his study of Celine, "Celine the Crippled Giant" (1950). He corresponded with Celine for several years, fascinated by his poetry and repelled by his anti-semitism, until the two met for a series of meetings in Denmark in 1949. Hindus also wrote studies of Proust, Walt Whitman, F.Scott Fitzgerald, and New York's Lower East Side. Hindus once wrote "My conviction is that the most important life is that of the mind, and if this does not transpire through all the writer's work, then indeed he has written in vain."
Late in his career, Hindus began to write about the American Jewish poet Charles Reznikoff (1894-1976). Hindus believed Reznikoff's work was, if not of popular appeal, of great literary merit. He wrote introductions to Reznikoff's texts, published a volume of his letters, and edited a collection of essays "Charles Reznikoff:Man and Poet" (1984) in an attempt to save Reznikoff from oblivion Hindus also wrote this brief 67 page study that is the subject of this review, "Charles Reznikoff: A Critical Essay" (1977) as an introduction to Reznikoff's life and work.
As was Hindus, Reznikoff was born in New York City to Russian Jewish immigrants. Reznikoff studied journalism, received a law degree, and practiced law very briefly. But his heart was in poetry and writing. In 1918, Reznikoff self-published his first short volume of poetry. He wrote poetry, novels,short plays, and histories over the course of a long life.
Together with W.C. Williams, Oppen, Rakosi,and Louis Zukofsky, Reznikoff became a practitioner of a form of poetry known as objectivism, which derived a great deal from Ezra Pound. Reznikoff's poetry is spare, short, and understated. It depends on precise capturing of things while keeping the ego of the writer to a minimum. The poetry is written with great simplicity to enable the reader to see afresh without sentimentality, preconceptions, or the judgment of the author.
Hindus's book gives only the briefest description of Reznikoff's quiet, obscure life. With the exception of a few years spent in Hollywood during the 1930s, Reznikoff lived his entire life in New York City. He was an inveterate walker and observer and wrote of the life of immigrants, and of the subways, streets, skyscrapers, bridges and parks of New York City. Reznikoff's is the poetry of a solitary wanderer in New York. Raised by his immigrant parents to a secular life, Reznikoff also became a poet of Judaism, although he never joined a synagogue, and viewed Jewish theology with ambivalence. Spinoza and his immanentism were great influences on Reznikoff.
Hindus takes the reader on a brief journey through Reznikoff's short poems and his two novels based upon the Jewish immigrant experience: "By the Waters of Manhattan" (1929) and "A Family Chronicle."(1963). The essay does not discuss Reznikoff's final important novel, the posthumously published "The Manner Music."
Hindus also offers extensive discussions of Reznikoff's two long poems: "Testimony" (1965,1968)and "Holocaust"(1975). The former work consists of a collection of short poems illustrating the history of the late 19th Century United States from reports of legal cases. It is a a chronicle of industrialization, materialism and their costs. "Holocaust" is drawn from the records of the Nuremberg Tribunal and from the Eichmann trial. It recounts the Holocaust in spare, restrained detail.
Hindus does a great deal of quoting in his essay, allowing Reznikoff to speak to the reader for himself. Hindus also emphasizes the discipline of the law and the importance it places or should place on clarity and succinctness of expression as essential to understanding Reznikoff's approach to writing. According to Hindus, "Nothing [Reznikoff] ever did was hasty, shoddy or ill-done." (p.61) Here is a small poem of Reznikoff's called "Te Deum" that Hindus uses to show Reznikoff's deceptively simple style, and love of the common life.
"Not because of victories
I sing
having none,
but for the common sunshine,
the breeze,
the largess of the spring.
Not for victory
but for the day's work done
as well as I as able;
not for a seat upon the dais
but at the common table."
The reader new to Reznikoff should start with his "Collected Poems" published by Black Sparrow Press covering the years 1918-1936 and 1937-1975. These short poems, in my opinion, constitute Reznikoff's greatest achievement. For all his many other accomplishments, I think Hindus will best be remembered for his work, including this essay, in preserving the works of this great but little-known American poet.
The biographical information in this review about Milton Hindus is largely derived from an essay: Necrology: Milton Hindus, 1916-1998" by Aviva F.Taubenfeld.
Robin Friedman
WGHB
Jun 19, 2009
Illuminating Explication
This is an elegant and very illuminating essay by a scholar of Charles Reznikoff's ?uvre. Hindus has here produced a piece of literature in its own right.
Reznikoff was one of the finest poets of the 20th century, but like Bronk, Niedecker, and Zukofsky, is altogether too-little known here, save by those relatively few whose care and delight is good poetry.
The edition is beautiful indeed, exemplifying Black Sparrow Press in its heyday.
