The American poet Louis Zukofsky received little public attention during his lifetime, though he was regarded by his literary contemporaries as one of the finest writers in the United States. Now in paperback, Complete Short Poetry gathers all of Zukofsky's poetry outside his 800-page magnum opus entitled " A"--including work that appeared in All: The Collected Short Poems, 1923-1964, the experimental transliteration (with Celia Zukofsky) of Catullus, the limited edition 80 Flowers, as well as several fugitive pieces never before collected.
"Zukofsky is the American Mallarmé," writes Hugh Kenner, "and given the peculiar intentness of the American preoccupation with language--obsessive, despite what you may read in the newspapers--his work is more disorienting by far than his exemplar's ever was. Mallarmé had a long poetic tradition from which to deviate into philology. Zukofsky received a philological tradition, which he raised to a higher power."
