Charles Reznikoff (August 31, 1894 - January 22, 1976) was the poet for whom the term Objectivist was first coined. When asked by Harriet Munroe to provide an introduction to what became known as the Objectivist issue of Poetry, Louis Zukofsky used his essay Sincerity and Objectification: With Special Reference to the Work of Charles Reznikoff. In this way, the name of the loose-knit group of 2nd generation modernist poets was found and the two desiderata for the type of poetry they stood for were clearly stated: sincerity and objectification. August 31 is the 243rd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (244th in leap years), with 122 days remaining. ... 1894 (MDCCCXCIV) was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... January 22 is the 22nd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1976 (MCMLXXVI) is a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). ... Poet is a term applied to a person who composes poetry, including extended forms such as dramatic verse. ... William Carlos Williams, who was the only poet to be published as both an Objectivist and an Imagist The Objectivist poets were a loose-knit group of second-generation Modernists who emerged in the 1930s. ... Harriet Monroe (1860 - 1936) was an American editor, scholar, literary critic, and patron of the arts. ... Poetry, published in Chicago, Illinois, is one of the leading monthly poetry journals in the English-speaking world. ... The cover of the 1978 edition of Zukofskys long poem A. Louis Zukofsky (January 23, 1904 - May 12, 1978) was one of the most important second-generation American modernist poets. ... Mountebanks ...

Early Years

Reznikoff was born in a Jewish ghetto in Brooklyn, New York of Russian parents. After a year studying journalism, he entered the law school of New York University in 1912 and graduated in 1916. He practised law briefly and entered officer training school in 1918, but failed to see active service before the end of the war. Jews (Hebrew: יהודים translit. ... A ghetto is an area where people from a specific ethnic background or united in a given culture or religion live as a group, voluntarily or involuntarily, in milder or stricter seclusion. ... For other meanings, see Brooklyn (disambiguation). ... Official language(s) None, English de facto Capital Albany Largest city New York City Area  - Total  - Width  - Length  - % water  - Latitude  - Longitude Ranked 27th 141,205 km² 455 km 530 km 13. ... Motto: none Anthem: National Anthem of Russia Capital Moscow Largest city Moscow Official language(s) Russian, many others in component republics Government President Prime Minister Semi-presidential federation Vladimir Putin Mikhail Fradkov Independence  - Declared (Russia Day)  - Finalized From the Soviet Union June 12, 1990 December 26, 1991 Area  â€¢ Total  â€¢ Water... New York University (NYU) is a major research university in New York City. ... 1912 (MCMXII) was a leap year starting on Monday in the Gregorian calendar (or a leap year starting on Tuesday in the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... 1916 (MCMXVI) is a leap year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar) // Events January-February January 1 - The Royal Army Medical Corps first successful blood transfusion using blood that had been stored and cooled. ... World War I, also known as the First World War and (before 1939) the Great War, the War of the Nations, War to End All Wars, was a world conflict lasting from August 1914 to the final Armistice (cessation of hostilities) on November 11, 1918. ...

Reznikoff worked for a time for his family's business as a hat salesman. He then worked for a legal publishing house where he wrote summaries of court records for legal reference books. This experience was to prove important for his later writing.

From his teens, Reznikoff had been writing poetry, much of it influenced by the Imagists, and publishing it himself using handset printing plates. Throughout his writing life, Reznikoff was always concerned to ensure that his work was published, even at his own expense. This appears to have been inspired by a family story of his grandfather, an unpublished Hebrew poet whose manuscripts were destroyed after his death. Ezra Pound, one of the prime movers of Imagism. ... Hebrew (עִבְרִית ‘Ivrit) is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family spoken by more than 7 million people, mainly in Israel, the West Bank, the United States and by Jewish communities around the world. ...

Objectivist Poet

Around the time the Objectivist issue of Poetry appeared, Reznikoff, Zukofsky and George Oppen set up To Publishers and later the Objectivist Press, essentially to publish their own work. Reznikoff had had some success with his 1930 novel By the Waters of Manhattan, and the new press published three titles by him, two that gathered together previously self-published work and the third a first installment of a long work called Testimony. George Oppen (April 24, 1908 - July 7, 1984) was an American poet, best known as one of the founders of the Objectivist group of poets. ... 1930 (MCMXXX) is a common year starting on Wednesday. ...

Court Poetry

Testimony was, initially, a prose retelling of stories that Reznikoff had discovered while working on court records. In these stories, Reznikoff discovered something of the story of America between 1855 and 1915 both in its diversity and its violence. Tellingly, he chose to omit the judgements, focusing on the stories themselves. 1855 was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... 1915 (MCMXV) was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ...

Over the following forty years, Reznikoff worked on turning these stories into an extended found poem that finally ran to some 500 pages over two volumes. He aimed to present the stories in as near as possible the words of the participants, and the result was a poetry almost entirely stripped of metaphor and of authorial personality and emotion. In this sense, Testimony can be read as the great monument of Objectivist poetry. Found poetry is the rearrangment of words or phrases taken randomly from other sources (example: clipped newspaper headlines, bits of advertising copy, handwritten cards pulled from a hat) in a manner that gives the rearranged words a completely new meaning. ... In language, a metaphor (from the Greek: metapherin) is a rhetorical trope defined as a direct comparison between two seemingly unrelated subjects. ...

The poetic mode developed in the making of this work was to prove invaluable when Reznikoff started work on Holocaust, which was based on courtroom accounts of Nazi concentration camps. He also adopted this style for many of his poetic retellings of stories from the Old Testament. It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Nazism. ... A concentration camp is a large detention centre created for political opponents, aliens, specific ethnic or religious groups, civilians of a critical war-zone, or other groups of people, often during a war. ... Note: Judaism commonly uses the term Tanakh, but not Old Testament, because it does not recognize the concept of a New Testament. ...

Late Recognition

Reznikoff lived and wrote in relative obscurity and poverty for most of his life, with his work being either self-published or issued by small independent presses. In the early 1960s, this situation seemed set to change when New Directions Publishers published two books, including the first installment of the verse Testimony. However, critical reaction to this book was generally negative and Reznikoff once again found himself publishing his own work. New Directions Publishers was founded in 1936 by James Laughlin after graduating from Harvard University. ...

In 1971, he was awarded the Morton Dauwen Zabel Prize of $2,500 by The National Institute of Arts and Letters. He also found a new publisher around this time, Black Sparrow Press. They published By the Well of Living and Seeing: New and Selected Poems, 1918-1973 in 1974. At the time of his death, Reznikoff was correcting proofs of the first volume of the Black Sparrow Collected Poems. In the years immediately following his death, Black Sparrow brought all his major poetry and prose works back into print. 1971 (MCMLXXI) is a common year starting on Friday (click for link to calendar). ... Black Sparrow Books, formerly known as Black Sparrow Press, is a small book publisher and an imprint of David R. Godin, Publisher. ... 1974 (MCMLXXIV) is a common year starting on Tuesday (click on link for calendar). ...

External links

• Charles Reznikoff at Modern American Poetry
• Bibliography
• Review of The Poems of Charles Reznikoff: 1918-1975