From Charles Reznikoff’s “Rivers and Seas, Harbors and Ports,” published in “Testimony,” Objectivist Press (1934):
a cargo of sandalwood at the Fiji Islands and
at Guam a quantity of beech de mer, betel nuts, and deer horns; ivory rings for
martingales; a cargo of copper ore, shipped in Chile; sperm and whale oil,
sperm candles and whalebone; pigs of copper; six seroons of indigo; pigs of
lead, moys of salt, and frails of raisins; seal skins, prime fur and pup skins,
from seals taken at the Falkland Islands; a cargo of tea, fresh, prime, and of
the finest chop, quarter chests of tea, hyson skin and congo, with the present
of a shawl from the hong merchant in Canton; cases, trunks, bales, casks, kegs
and bundles
Here’s a big shout-out to Eliot Weinberger, whose “Poet at
the Automat” piece in the London Review of Books, Jan. 22, 2015, introduced me
to a writer I’ve known about for years – but have never read. This Charles Reznikoff (1894-1976) seems, in
Weinberger’s smart and considered interpretation, a kindred spirit. Some
reasons why:
“There was the legend of Reznikoff, the
invisible poet, walking twenty miles a day in New York City, writing down his
observations in a little notebook, meeting cronies who never knew he was a
writer at the Automat, publishing his own books of perfect poems for more than
fifty years. A sweet, elderly man who was maddeningly self-deprecating. George
and Mary Oppen told me about a reading in Michigan, at the end of which the
audience was on its feet, wildly cheering. Rezi, as they called him, was heard
to mumble: ‘I hope I haven’t taken up too much of your time.’”
It is an aspiration of mine to be seen as a kind and self-effacing man like Charles Reznikoff, a writer who until
his mid-sixties published nearly all his books himself, setting type for many
of them on a printing press in his parents’ basement.
Charles Reznikoff is an American original, a writer’s writer.
Please note: This is not an Amazon published writer. Rather, Reznikoof is a man who self-published
and continues to be read and discussed in the most learned journals of today.
After Weinberger's timely introduction (I am not yet in my mid-sixties!), I can’t wait
to sit and read his work.
Next: Running for Your Life: Mental Fitness
