For L.Z.

It is an honor to know men and women of genius and probity, because we live, finally, in a human world and however we would dispose ourselves toward that world otherwise the case, it is the human one which makes the most intimate and significant judgment. For myself and others of my generation, our elders in the art were extraordinary example and resource. Despite a chaos of restrictive generalization, we had nonetheless the active, persistent functioning of example: Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Basil Bunting, Louis Zukofsky—to note those most dear to my own heart.

My first information of Zukofsky was in the dedications of two books crucial to my senses of poetry, Ezra Pound's Guide to Kulchur ("To Louis Zukofsky and Basil Bunting, strugglers in the desert") and Williams' The Wedge ("To L.Z."). It was, however, Edward Dahlberg who gave me my first active sense of Zukofsky's situation and urged me to invite him to contribute to The Black Mountain Review , which happily I did, resulting in the publication of a section from "A" 12 (BMR #5), and "Songs of Degrees" and "Bottom: On Shakespeare , Part Two" (BMR #6). In the meantime Robert Duncan had arrived in Mallorca and become a close friend and mentor, and it was he who showed me Williams' review of Anew as well as texts by Zukofsky himself. Then, in 1955 as I recall, while teaching at Black Mountain and visiting briefly in New York, I determined to meet Zukofsky if possible, and so one evening attempted the subway out to Brooklyn with just twenty cents in my pocket. As luck would have it, I overshot my destination, spent my remaining dime

on correcting my error, and finally arrived tentative, confused, and literally penniless.

It's to the point, I believe, that such acts be remembered, especially when they define the possibilities of human responsibility and choice. As I came into the house on Willow Street, to be met by these extraordinarily dear and tender people, I somehow determined it would be best for all concerned if I revealed my predicament immediately, and I tried to. But Louis asked a favor of me, as he put it, saying that Celia was altering an overcoat for him, and it would help the sense of fitting required if I would put it on so that he might see how it looked. I did, and immediately Louis said, "There, it's yours!" Or words to that effect, because I cannot remember clearly what literally he did say, being then so distracted by the generosity of the gift and the fact that I had still to tell them I was broke. Finally I got that said, and their response was the specific coin required for the subway, and a five dollar bill to go with it, and a substantial lunch for the trip back to Black Mountain next day.

And it never changed. Always that shy, intensive warmth, that dear, particular care. In fact, the last time I saw them together was in New York—we had met the day previous, by blessed accident, in the street—and I had come up to see them where they were now living in a residential hotel off Central Park. As luck would have it, there was a torrential thunderstorm through which I walked a considerable distance, and arrived, dripping and wet to the skin. My coat was taken from me and hung up over the bath tub to dry. I was sat down and given hot coffee to warm me up, etc., etc. When Celia asked me if I'd like cream, I said, yes, if it was simple—which it proved not to be. So she gave me a spoonful of vanilla ice cream, to act as cream for the coffee, and then a full dish of it, in the event I might enjoy it for its own sake. And then we talked.

If I try to isolate my senses of Louis Zukofsky from those memories now, I neither can nor can I see the reason to. He taught me so much, in so many ways. Without the least trying, so to speak, the measures of person, of conduct, of art, which he constituted, are all of a factual piece. Again I think of that frail man's walking me late at night to the subway entrance, so I wouldn't have difficulty finding it, despite the effort it must have been for him to confront those streets at that hour, and his walk back alone. I remember "raise grief to music"—"the joy that comes from knowing things"—"the more so all have it"—"upper limit music, lower limit speech"—"love lights light in like eyes"—"he got around. . . ." And if I misquote, then I do—because this is the practical, daily company of

Louis Zukofsky for me, the measure of his father, "everybody loved Reb Pincos because he loved everybody. Simple. . . ."

Thankfully, I was able at times to make clear my respect—in various reviews and notes, in the rather crunky introduction to "A" 1–12 (New York: Doubleday, 1967) with its several misprints, etc. And, more privately, I could argue the case at times, as Hugh Kenner will remember, apropos "The winds / agitating / the / waters." Which certainly looked easy, as he said, but trying, did discover was otherwise—and then wrote the primary review of "A" 1–12 (in its first Origin edition), in which he rightly qualifies the art of Zukofsky's practice as so much the more accomplished than Auden's, whose Homage to Clio he was also reviewing. Etc. These 'arguments' will die with us too. L.Z.—never.