Charles Reznikoff (1894-1976) is best known for a multi-volume collection entitled Testimony: The United States 1885-1915. With William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound, he was part of a group of poets known as the Objectivists, who treated the poem as an object used to explain a clear view of the world. Reznikoff continued as an Objectivist poet through his lifetime, focusing on immigrants, Black Americans, and the poor. For his last collection, Holocaust (1975), he used court testimony from the war crimes trials and Nazi death camps as his research material.
Before he was labeled and associated with a group, Reznikoff was publishing poetry. He had his first two collections, Rhythms (1918) and Rhythms II (1919), privately printed for friends. Both were very short, more like short chapbooks, but already he was showing the writing style that would come to characterize his works of the 1930s and afterward.
To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.
Some Tuesday Readings
Leaving the Island – poem by A.E. Stallings at The Times Literary Supplement.
Sing a New Song to the Lord: The Hundredfold by Anthony Esolen – Jeremiah Tobin at The Imaginative Conservative.
My Boy – a Little League Baseball Poem by Gregory Ross at Society of Classical Poets.
Things Worth Remembering: Contemplating the Ruins – Douglas Murray at The Free Press.
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