Z-siteA Companion to the Works of Louis Zukofsky
Autobiography (1970) and Other Selected Poems
Although published only under LZ’s name, the Autobiography is another collaboration with CZ, consisting primarily of a selection of short poems accompanied by CZ’s musical settings. CZ began composing music to short poems in Dec. 1940 (“Motet”, included in I’s (pronounced eyes)) and by Dec. 1952 had completed all the 22 settings to 18 poems that make up the bulk of Autobiography. LZ includes both the composition dates of each poem as well as of each musical setting, which indicates the order of their presentation is determined by the latter. Many of these settings appear to have been done as Christmas cards or presents for LZ, reciprocating the Valentine poems LZ usually wrote more or less annually for CZ. In 1967 LZ was asked to write a brief biographical statement for an update of the reference volume, World Authors, which became the short prose remarks distributed throughout Autobiography (Scroggins Bio 410). These remarks eventually appeared in the volume in 1975 (World Authors 1950-1970: A Companion Volume to Twentieth Century Authors, ed. John Wakeman, NY: H.W. Wilson Co.): 1591.
It is not clear when LZ first conceived of this as a publishable project, but in a letter to Cid Corman dated 11 May 1960, LZ mentions that CZ had just made a clear copy of the settings and hinted that it might be an appropriate publication for Origin Press (HRC 18.2). The preface is dated 17 Feb. 1962, which was also the period when the two were working on Catullus together, and LZ took every opportunity to make public CZ’s collaborative efforts. Autobiography was eventually published by Grossman in 1970, in a very attractive design, with the musical scores in light brown print, and has never been reprinted. A performance of Autobiography took place in Lincoln Center, NYC on 31 March 1971, in which LZ’s reading of all the poems was followed by a performance of CZ’s scores sung by professional singers of The Metropolitan Opera Studio with LZ reading out the autobiographical prose passages as interludes. The recording of this performance can be heard at PennSound.
The poems included were all written between 1930 and 1952, but are not arranged in chronological order. The poems are as follows:
Motet (Some Time), setting composed 9 Dec. 1940
Song 11 (55 Poems), setting composed 17 March 1941
Song 8 [2 musical settings] (55 Poems), settings composed spring 1941
#5 (Anew), setting composed spring 1941
Song 22 (55 Poems), setting composed Sept. 1941
Light: #10 (Some Time), setting composed 25 Dec. 1941
Song 21 (55 Poems), setting composed 15 March 1942
Song 16 (55 Poems), setting composed 25 Dec. 1942
Song 13 (55 Poems), setting composed 11 Jan. 1943
#36 (Anew), setting composed 11 Jan. 1943
A Song for the Year’s End: #1 (Some Time), setting composed 25 Dec. 1945
#29 (Anew), setting composed 9 Nov. 1946
que j’ay dit devant: #1 (Some Time), setting composed 25 Dec. 1947
So that even a lover: #1 (Some Time), setting composed 25 Dec. 1948
Xenophanes (Some Time), setting composed 25 Dec. 1949
“As to how much” (Some Time), setting composed 25 Dec. 1950
To My Valentines (Some Time), setting composed 25 Dec. 1951
Old (Some Time), setting composed 25 Dec. 1952
There is at least one further “mirror canon” by CZ of Anew 29 (“Glad they were there”), which was published in Counter/Measures 2 (1973). There it states that this setting is from Autobiography without the words, although this is an error and is different from the “mirror canons” without words on pages 48-49.
Other volumes of selected poems
In addition to the Autobiography, LZ and/or CZ made and published several selections of poetry during the 1960s. Also in 1960 LZ made an interesting “Choice of Favorites” for an Academy of American Poets publication, whose contents I will list below
16 Once Published (Edinburgh, Scotland: The Wild Hawthorn Press, 1962)
This selection was made by CZ and apparently included an introduction consisting of excerpts from “Poetry / for my son when he can read,” which at LZ’s request were not bound into the book but inserted loose-leaf (Booth 40).
Passing tall (55 Poems)
Run on, you still dead to the sound of a name (55 Poems)
PROP. LXI (55 Poems)
It’s a gay li – ife (55 Poems)
No One Inn (55 Poems)
Che di lor suona su nella tua vita (Anew)
It’s hard to see but think of a sea (Anew)
No it was no dream of coming death (Anew)
Strange (Anew)
The world autumn (Anew)
Xenophanes (Some Time)
Air (Anew)
Shang Cup (Anew)
An Incident (Anew)
The green leaf that will outlast the winter (Barely and widely)
Ashtray (Barely and widely)
Found Objects (Georgetown, Kentucky: H.B. Chapin, 1964), A Blue Grass Book.
The brief preface to this volume, “Found Objects (1962-1926),” is included in Prepositions (167).
The Ways (After I’s)
Stratford-on-Avon (Barely and widely)
The Guests (Some Time)
Michtam (Some Time)
You three: —my wife (Anew)
“One oak fool box”; —the pun (Anew)
1892-1941 (Anew)
“Mantis” (55 Poems)
“Specifically, a writer of music” (55 Poems)
Song—3/4 time (55 Poems)
To my wash-stand (55 Poems)
Poem beginning “The” (55 Poems)
“A” Libretto (NY: privately printed [mimeographed], 1965)
Composed of selections from all movements of “A” written up to that point (LZ dated the work as finished 29 Oct. 1964): that is, through “A”-14 plus the three short occasional movements composed in 1963 and numbered out of sequence: “A”-16, -17 and -20.
Selections of Others made by LZ
“Choice of Favorites,” Poetry Pilot, Academy of American Poets (1 Jan. 1960): 4-14.
“Our Poetry Editor this month, Mr. Louis Zukofsky, has given us something unusual in his selections for Poetry Pilot. It is his ‘choice of favorites’ that covers some 3,000 years in time, and it consists mainly, as has been seen of translations or adaptations by himself” (14). These selections are interspersed throughout the issue:
Shakespeare, Pericles, Gower chorus to Act III / Text of the First Quarto [a couple lines from this prologue are quoted in Bottom 422]
Homer, Odyssey, Invocation of Book I [LZ’s adaptation as it appears in TP 117 (7b) and at the conclusion of “A”-12.261.123-20]
Xenophanes [from Some Time, CSP 123]
Catullus IV Phasellus ille [CSP 246-247]
Catullus V Vivamus [CSP 247]
Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, Bk. V [as adapted in “A”-12.165.1-19]
Guillaume de Machault (1300-1377) / Ballade: Plourères, dames [from Anew, CSP 86-87]
Spinoza, Ethics and de intellectus [various passages as adapted in “A”-12.174.8-175.3]
Psalms 16 [as adapted in “A”-12.144.7-22]
“A May Suite of an Older Sympathy,” Poetry Pilot (May 1966): 7-9.
Under this title LZ made a short selection of younger poets for Poetry Pilot, the newsletter of the Academy of American Poets: