An Attempt to Apply the Principles of Louis Zukofsky's Poetry to My Poems Part II*

The poetry of Louis Zukofsky is not always easy to understand. For example, you can't write a paragraph explaining how to write an Objective poem according to Mr. Zukofsky. At least I can't. His poetry depends on what portion of his life you study. He said different things about poetry at different times of his life, and he was a man who had a lot to say. I've found it helpful when I study his poetry to study one mode at a time. In my last article "An Attempt to Apply Louis Zukofsky's Objectivist Poetics to My Poem Beggars of Iron,"
I concentrated on the principles underlying his poem, Mantis. I tried to clearly describe the objects in the poem, and tried to base changes as coming through nature. As the plants struggled in the harsh conditions, so man struggled, and both succeeded in their struggles through agonizingly hard work.
In my next two poems, I concentrate on his idea of deliberate syntactic fragmentation and
disruptive line break. There is no doubt that some of his poetry is very difficult to understand.
Why would he use such poetic concepts? One reason that occurred to me is that the great enemy of the poet is stagnation of language, loss of language freshness in the mind. We struggle to say things in a fresh, new, unstereotyped way. Could it be, that Mr. Zukofsky and the school of poetry to which he belonged, tried to tear away stale language by going back to its roots, syntax, words, objects? Also, Mr. Zukofsky used unusual typography and wordplay. With this in mind, I wrote the following. One plays with words and typography. The other incorporates syntactic fragmentation and disruptive line break.

*Poetry Foundation has an excellent article on Louis Zukofsky ( www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=7665)

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`SUBWAY SHOE STORE - Centipides and Mantis WELCOME!

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by Mary Naylor

I'd like to buy some shoes, please - without laces.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO^^
LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLU

Union Sta
tion
By Mary Naylor

The trains at Uni
on Station are like stea
ming dra
gons of thun
der. They roar and scream.
In the cafe
ter
ia
Litt
le birds
hide in the rafters
and wa
tch for
c
r
u
m
b
s
Greasy fri
es are
their
w
*o
**r
***m
*****s. Peo
ple feed these
birds salty
worms.
The dra
gons come and
go. They
SCREAM
and GASP
and hissssssssssss.

I don't know if Mr. Zyukofsky, or other Objectivist Poets would approve of this, but I enjoyed
creating it. As I see it, it does call attention to the words and syntax.

In my next article, I try to decide how syntactic fragmentation and/or line disruption would be useful in a poem. I thought it would help to bring out the tragedy of September 11.