'... And Ask for a Poem':
HINDUS, MILTON
'... And Ask for a Poem' Inscriptions: 1944-1956. By Charles Reznikoff. Privately printed. Reviewed by Milton Hindus Professor of English, Brandeis University; Author, "The Proustian...
...Such lucidity is certainly not without risks, for the artist's depth, his limitations of thought and feeling are clearly visible to the beholder, whereas a more clouded surface might leave the reader in some doubt...
...This could have served as an epigraph for ReznikofFs whole book in which lucidity and beauty of sound are indissolubly joined together...
...This has great vigor and is written to last...
...He is also able to expand on the same theme with more definite detail and dramatic imagery without vitiating its strength: These days when I dare not spend freely and the friends I meet are uneasy that I might ask for a loan, I dreamt of you: my friend at school...
...if we seek not Blue-book knowledge but the enjoyment of poetry, and ask for a poem, we shall seldom find it...
...I myself must record that though I have criticized some of bis prose, I have never read his verses in their rare appearances in Commentary, The Jewish Frontier (which he is helping to edit at the moment), The Menorah Journal and Midstream without a feeling of keen delight that makes me wish to direct the attention of other readers to his work...
...He is not important now...
...But I wonder whom you thought important...
...The faces about you were shadowed but yours was smiling, fresh and pink...
...And: One of my sentinels, a tree, sent spinning after me this brief secret on a leaf: the summer is over— forever...
...That was true...
...Sometimes the poet is bitterly ironical and pins his victims wriggling against the wall— I remember very well when I asked you— as if you were a friend—whether or not I should go somewhere or other, you answered: "It does not matter: you are not at all important...
...not for a seat upon the dais but at the common table...
...The rhymes of "sing" and "'spring" in the first stanza and of "able" and "table" in the second seem just right and to have much to do with the poem's effect...
...Kenneth Burke, introducing the volume Testimony, paid tribute to its poignancy, workmanship, sensitiveness, deftness and accuracy...
...If we attend to the confused cries of the newspaper critics and the sussurus of popular repetition that follows, we shall hear the names of poets in great numbers...
...Here is one example, Te Deum: Not because of victories I sing, having none, but for the common sunshine, the breeze, the largesse of the spring...
...And I must be in my dotage for I find myself weeping that you are dead— who have been dead for a long time...
...Grammatically, the idea may have been suggested by a turn of phrase in Dylan Thomas' In My Craft and Sullen Art: "Not for the proud man I write...
...Reznikoff's terse messages deserve a second glance to see whether they are not valuable notes drawn against the substantial account of an impressively valid sensibility...
...Thirty years ago, Trilling noted the delicacy, distinction, truth and remarkable originality which he found in one of ReznikofFs works, By The Waters of Manhattan...
...Reznikoff chooses words and joins them together with an exquisite care that is a delight to me...
...Now in book form (privately printed), the familiar pieces stand up under scrutiny so well that there is little question in my mind of an erroneous judgment...
...He takes pleasure in versifying well-known parables or traditional themes, as in the following couplet: The nail is lost...
...The rhyme grows naturally...
...He who has been in his grave these ten years or more...
...it is not dictated in advance by a chosen form...
...I can understand why, for though he does not hobble himself into a box of exactly seventeen syllables, he cultivates the qualities of simplicity, lucidity and concentration that are the hallmark of this kind of Oriental poetry...
...They are poetry...
...I was going to ask you a question and afraid you might find it foolish (you were somewhat older and sensible...
...This turn is twice repeated by Thomas, but the resemblance does not detract from Reznikoff's originality...
...Though consigned to the thankless role of understudy on the literary scene and never called upon to take the center of the stage, his work has in the past gained for him the suffrage of such diverse but subtle critical intelligences as those of Lionel Trilling and Kenneth Burke...
...But I for one take pleasure in the neat and pointed formulation in the following quatrain: Scrap of paper blown about the street, you would like to be cherished, I suppose, like a bank-note...
...Charles Reznikoff, on the other hand, is in the position of a man who has produced some genuine poetry but whose name has largely escaped the rumor-mongers so that the fact of his accomplishment is almost a secret...
...In supporting the lack of rhyme and the liberties he has taken with the rhythms of an original poem by Jehuda Halevi, which he has translated, Reznikoff quotes the medieval Hebrew poet's own observation that "it is but proper that mere beauty of sound should yield to lucidity of speech...
...Author, "The Proustian Vision" A WELL-KNOWN passage in T. S. Eliot's essay Tradition and the Individual Talent reads: "Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation are directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry...
...Reznikoff has been associated with groups that have left a certain mark upon poetic development: the Imagists (whose influence still makes itself felt in some of his latest work) and the Objectivists of Louis Zukofsky...
...It must be a careful reader indeed, with a long and tenacious memory, to whom the name of this writer, now in his 60s and author of four collections of verse and at least four of prose, is familiar...
...Or he who is wearing out a path in the carpet of his room as he paces it like a shabby coyote in a cage, an old man hopelessly mad...
...His characteristic lyrics are of small compass, and I am told by someone who knows him personally that one of his favorite forms is the Japanese haiku...
...It is very difficult to say exactly what is the source of Reznikoff's power, but it is possible to feel it in his briefest expressions...
...If you were the sentry, you would not fall asleep— of course...
...horse and rider, kingdom, too...
...Wounded you would not weep...
...I choose two examples: You are young and contemptuous...
...Not for victory but for the day's work done as well as I was able...
...He has caught here, very touchingly and with pathos which stops short of sentimentality, the sadness in the feeling of being seated "below the ealt...
...Perhaps the shoe...
...Yourself no doubt: looking like one who has been a great beauty...
Vol. 44 • January 1961 • No. 3
