Events listening to their own tremors

Starting from the point that Louis Zukofsky and Objectivism are already anachronisms in literary history, the essay tracks some of the consequences of that for a materialist reading of the poems, especially the epic “A”. If an epic is a poem that “includes history” (Pound), then there are various ways in which that inclusion can be construed. Zukofsky, who sets out with a Poundian technique of temporal juxtaposition within a compositional field, gradually transforms his aesthetic in a more acutely anachronistic direction. When mere juxtaposition failed to re-ignite the spark of historical hope bequeathed by the past, he found that the concentrated force-field of “new” historical contents in anachronistic, extinct formal frames could accomplish the miracle: a momentary restitution of the lost light of dead labour

Active listening · Aesthetics · Anachronism · Art · EPIC · Epistemology · Literature · Marxist philosophy · Objectivism · Poetry · Politics · Sociology · French Literature and Critical Theory · French Literature and Criticism · French Literature and Poetry · History · Law · Philosophy