Louis Zukofsky's "An Objective"
 

Zukofsky's "objective principles" (including sincerity and objectification)
 
see Prepositions +: The Collected Critical Essays
 
Peter O'Leary, writing for Poetry Foundation, supplies some helpful context:
"the principles of 'sincerity' and 'objectification' [cohere] in 'the energies of words.' Accordingly, sincerity is to be true to living in the world; objectification is to represent its facts."
 
"Sincerity occurs when writing 'is the detail, not mirage, of seeing, of thinking with the things as they exist, and of directing them along a line of melody.'"
 
"He seems to be gesturing toward elements of visual and musical beauty contained in a line, what he would call in his 1948 book A Test of Poetry the 'sight' and 'sound' of a poem."
 
"Objectification, on the other hand, is a nearly mystical expression of 'rested totality'—a talismanic phrase and the poetic property that Zukofsky more highly valued."
 
"'Rested totality' stands for that part of the imagination that is receptive and mainly intuitive."
 
"Poet Norman Finkelstein has written that 'Zukofsky’s dream of the poem as the totality of perfect rest . . . is surely one of the most hermetic texts in the annals of twentieth-century poetics, and as such, it is open to endless Talmudic interpretation and disputation.'”

> from Lyn Hejinian's Allegorical Moments: Call to the Everyday (2023)

> tagged with #to_read, #reality, #sound, #poetics

> created Jan 23, 2025 at 2:40:25 PM


> part of unfinished everything


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