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Poems 1918-1975: The Complete Poems of Charles Reznikoff

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Reznikoff is a poet in whose work there has been a revival of interest in recent years. His poems are often snapshots of everyday life, in accord with the Objectivist doctrine he shared with Zukofsky, Fenellosa, and others. In an illuminating essay on Reznikoff's total work the writer Hillel Halkin points out that much of Reznikoff's poetry approaches prose, lacks metaphor. Halkin however adds that Reznikoff does have at times a real vitality in his verse, a special power of rhythm, and that he has in his work produced ten or twelve poems of outstanding quality.

Halkin also says that while many call Reznikoff the most Jewish of Jewish American poets his Jewish subject poems are often simply retellings of Biblical stories.

Halkin sees that Reznikoff's poems at their best have a haiku like quality and surprise in their quality of perception.

Charles Reznikoff, The Complete Poems of Charles Reznikoff (Black Sparrow Press, 1989)

The inherent problem with reading a collected works by one of one's favorite poets is that, inevitably, the collected includes all the stuff the poet (and/or his editors) weeded out of the selected in order to put a real shine on it. In every case I've gone from reading the selected to the collected, I've emerged with less (albeit, often, slightly less) respect for the poet involved. Charles Reznikoff is no exception.

Hillel Halkin published a seemingly controversial review of this in Commentary back at the beginning of the year. Why it's terribly controversial escapes me; there's nothing Halkin says that isn't the plan truth. Once Reznikoff left behind the world of metric verse (which he does early on in this chronological collection, and for the most part that is a very good thing), Reznikoff's poetry got even sparer than before. He was never a guy to use two words where one would suffice. Two syllables, even. This lends Reznikoff's work a sereness, a spareness that can get trying at times, if not outright boring.

Still, the guys at New Directions did their good work back in the day, and By the Waters of Manhattan came out in 1962, and it is a jewel, a flawless chrysoberyl masterpiece whose importance, beauty, and influence cannot be overstated. It is also less than half the size of the collected, and the section of stuff Reznikoff wrote after the publication of Manhattan is really quite slim. (It is, however, very good.) As expected, much of the rest of what's here is stuff from published editions that those editors at New Directions, and most likely Reznikoff himself, found wanting when it came time to do Manhattan. I do not doubt that, for someone writing a critical analysis of Charles Reznikoff's work, these are valuable pieces that deserve any sort of preservation they can get. For the average Joe who wants to know what all the fuss is about, however, I cannot recommend strongly enough you read By the Waters of Manhattan first. ***