Prepositions+: The Collected Critical Essays (Zukofsky, Louis, Selections. V. 2.)

Rating:
Summary: Clarity, Economy, Beauty
Review: Louis Zukofsky imbued criticism with the grace of his poetry. He believed that poetry was not a gesture to be revered, but a crystalization of experience, individual and general. Thus his criticism of poetry judges it against vital standards, with reference to philosophy and history, but without reference to critical fashion. The academic formulae which remove poetry from experience to convention are absent from this book: a great writer who takes pains to be an acute reader tells us what sustains him, and can sustain us.

The language of invention, of discovery must always seem strange at first, but time has brought us closer to these original explorations of sincerity in poetry. Zukofsky wrote about his contemporaries as they appeared, and helped many of them to appear. He was there. If you want to know what poetry can do, unfettered by prejudice, you can find it here. I urge you to. Prepositions, in conjuction with his poetry, can change and illuminate how you see, feel, hear, think.