Z-siteA Companion to the Works of Louis Zukofsky

6.2        Kay: although possibly a composite figure, this almost certainly refers to Irving Kaplan (1900-1988), who used the pseudonym of Roger Kaigh, by which name LZ referred to him privately as well. Kaplan was a classmate of LZ’s at Columbia University and maintained his friendship for many years. LZ refers to “Roger Kaigh” and quotes from his essay “Paper” in “American Poetry 1920-1930,” originally published in The Symposium (Jan. 1931); see Prep+ 147. For a detailed discussion of “Roger Kaigh,” his essay and their connections with both LZ and Bunting, see Andrew Crozier, “Paper Bunting,” Sagetrieb 14.3 (1995): 45-74, which also gives whatever biographical information that seems to be available on Kaplan. 

6.4        itch according to its wonts: punningly playing on Karl Marx, “each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!” From a famous passage in Critique of the Gotha Program (1875) offering a rare description of the fully realized communist society: “In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!” Phrases from this passage appear at 8.45.30-46.2.

6.5        Johann Sebastian: Bach (see 1.1.2).

6.6        traduction: Fr. translation; with also the sense of traduce.

6.13      Epos: an epic or a number of poems that treat an epic theme (AHD).

6.14      One Greek carrying off at least two wives…: referring to Agamemnon and the sack of Troy by the Greeks (see note at 6.18); in the original version of this movement published in An “Objectivists” Anthology, LZ specifically names Agamemnon here. Cf. quotation from Herodotus in Bottom 364.

6.16      Epopt caryatids: epopt = person initiated into religious mysteries; caryatid = supporting column sculptured in the form of a draped female figure, with the origin of the word meaning women of Caryae, a village in southern Greece (AHD).

6.18      (Agamemnon): leader of the Greeks in the Trojan war, who had a number of unfortunate experiences involving women: for offending Artemis, he sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia in order for the Greek army to set sail for Troy; he quarreled with Achilles over the captive girl Briseis; he took Cassandra as part of his war booty during the sack of Troy; and met his demise at the hands of his wife Clytemnestra on his return home. Of course, this whole string of events was set off by Paris’ “kidnapping” of Helen, wife of Menelaus who was brother of Agamemnon.

6.19      Ritornelle: It. a refrain in music.

6.22      torus: bulging rounded projection or swelling.

6.24      Ricky: LZ’s friend Richard Chambers; see 3.9.3.

7.8        liveforever: the house leek or Sempervivum (L. always living); see 1.4.29. This succulent grows in rosettes with rows of thick leaves, thus the apparent oddity of flowers of leaves rather than petals in this passage.

7.9        Hyaline: resembling glass, as in translucence or transparency, glassy (AHD). Corman suggests that (“’A’-2″ 112) this may evoke a use of the word by EP in a famous watery passage of Canto 2: “Lithe turning of water / sinews of Poseidon, / Black azure and hyaline, / glass wave over Tyro…” (9-10). However, LZ often claimed he had not yet read any of the Cantos at the time he wrote the first movements of “A” in 1928; see Leggott who presents compelling evidence backing LZ claim (146-147).

7.19      Liveforever, everlasting…: on liveforever, see notes at 1.4.29 and 7.8. See also 5.18.24, and the word recurs several times in the Gilgamesh passage of “A”-23.541.10, 542.36, 543.25.

7.27     The flower bears rust lightly: while rust is a common fungus that effects many plants, here this more likely indicates the reddish tinge of the leaves characteristic of the liveforever (see note at 7.8). Leggott suggests this may relate to the red and green Wrigleys motif on the following page (149).

7.29      It is not the sea, but what floats over it: Cf. Walt Whitman’s “Song of the Banner at Daybreak” in Drum-Taps (1872); lines spoken by “The Poet”:

Fresh and rosy red the sun is mounting high,                               
On floats the sea in distant blue careering through its channels,
On floats the wind over the breast of the sea setting in toward land,
The great steady wind from west or west-by-south,
Floating so buoyant with milk-white foam on the waters.

But I am not the sea nor the red sun,
I am not the wind with girlish laughter,
Not the immense wind which strengthens, not the wind which lashes,
Not the spirit that ever lashes its own body to terror and death,
But I am that which unseen comes and sings, sings, sings,
Which babbles in brooks and scoots in showers on the land,
Which the birds know in the woods mornings and evenings,
And the shore-sands know and the hissing wave, and that banner and pennant,
Aloft there flapping and flapping.

8.7        (cantata): a vocal and instrumental piece composed of choruses, solos and recitatives (AHD).

8.10      Wrigleys: popular chewing gum. The packaging of Wrigleys Spearment Gum features a red and green design against white, and during this period its ads typically depicted a cartoony couple varying in age and in a wide variety of settings. Wrigleys gum is often cited as a classic instance of a commodity of little use created by heavy advertising. See 5.19.2 and 6.21.11.

8.16      Around Thy tomb here sit we weeping: this and the phrase at 8.18 from the final chorus of J.S. Bach, St. Matthew Passion, sung around the dead Christ’s tomb by the Apostles (No. 67 Recitative (Soli) with Chorus and No. 68 Chorus); see quotation at 1.2.2.