By the Well of Living and Seeing: New & Selected Poems 1918-1973

Literature & Fiction

Charles Reznikoff

Poetry

Black Sparrow Press

Black Sparrow is proud to restore to print one of the great long poems of the late 20th century, Charles Reznikoff's Holocaust, originally published in 1975.  Reznikoff's subject is one people's suffering at the hand of another. His source materials are the U.S. government's record of the trials of the Nazi criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunal and the transcripts of the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. Except for the twelve part titles, none of the words here are Reznikoff's own: instead he has created, through selection, arrangement, and the rhythms of the testimony set as verse on the page, a poem of witness by the perpetrators and the survivors of the Holocaust themselves. He lets the terrible history unfold -- in history's own words.  Reznikoff's technique, says David Lehman, "contradicts the very faculty of understanding. He lets reality speak for itself, lets it state the externals of the thing or event, and leaves unspoken (or edits out) the emotions, which the reader may be counted on to provide for himself."  Few readers will forget the emotions they bring to Holocaust.

Holocaust

Reznikoff's subject is one people's suffering at the hands of another. His source materials are the U.S. government's record of the trials of the Nazi criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunal and the transcripts of the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. None of the words here are Reznikoff's own: instead he has created, through selection and arrangement of the courtroom testimony, a poem that unfolds in the voices the perpetrators and the survivors of the Holocaust themselves. He lets the terrible history lay itself bare in history's own tongue.

History

World

Black Sparrow Pr

Poems 1918-1936 (Volume 1)

The Manner Music

First edition Morrow and Cooney 278a . Introduction by Robert Creeley. Biographical sketch of the author, with photograph, follows colophon. 128, 6 pages. stiff paper wrappers. 8vo..

One had not known, sadly, that Charles Reznikoff wrote novels. That a man should have such quiet and singular genius so modestly put aside (by himself) is regrettable. So much does shout at us, belligerently claiming attention for its style or its intelligence or its newness, that a story such as this one, so shyly assertive of what it so truly knows, is, humanly, such deep relief and reassurance - that one of us CAN care. The present publisher believes that the novel, discovered among the author's accumulation of manuscript after his death, was composed in the early 1950's. It is autobiographical, with one character, the narrator of the story, representing an aspect of Charles himself - the Charles who worked as a drummer, selling ladies' hats, who was disillusioned at trying to find the leisure to write, at getting his poetry accepted, etc. The protagonist of the novel, called Jude Dalsimer, is the Charles who never doubted his worth as a poet and who was determined to live out this destiny regardless of circumstance. A third character in the story, called Paul Pasha, is a portrait of Charles' most faithful friend for many years, who was a successful motion picture producer. According to the publisher, this novel was probably written in response to a letter William Carlos Williams wrote Charles in the late 1940's, at a time when Charles' career was at low ebb, urging him to continue writing at any cost, and if possible to write a novel...

<p>Charles Reznikoff (1894-1976) was born in Brooklyn, the son of Russian immigrants. He was an original, a blood-and-bone New Yorker who walked the city's waterfronts and breathed the life of the Jewish tenements into a lifetime of remarkable poetry. Black Sparrow Books is proud to publish his complete shorter poems - all of his poetry except the book-length works Testimony and Holocaust - scrupulously edited, with notes, by Seamus Cooney.</p>

The Poems Of Charles Reznikoff: 1918-1975 (A Black Sparrow Book)

<p>By the Waters of Manhattan was Charles Reznikoff's first novel, published in 1930 by Charles Boni in New York. Part family saga, part bildungsroman, and part unrequited love story, the novel follows the lives of a Jewish family at the turn of the century from Elizavetgrad, Russia to BrownsÂville, Brooklyn, birthplace of the novel's protagonist, Ezekiel, a young poet in search of ways to feed his stomach and his soul. Like Walt Whitman, Hart Crane, and Henry Roth, Reznikoff's subject is as much the great island of Manhattan, as it is its inhabitants.</p>

By the Waters of Manhattan (A Black Sparrow Book)

Contemporary

Five Leaves Publications

Holocauste : Fragments

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Charles Reznikoff. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Charles Reznikoff

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Charles Reznikoff. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

By the Well of Living and Seeing: New & Selected Poems 1918-1973

Holocaust

Holocaust

Poems 1918-1936 (Volume 1)

The Manner Music

The Manner Music

The Poems Of Charles Reznikoff: 1918-1975 (A Black Sparrow Book)

By the Waters of Manhattan (A Black Sparrow Book)

Holocaust

Holocauste : Fragments