Thursday, May 04, 2006

Zukofsky abroad...

in Botswana, of all places (thanks to Croissantfactory). Interestingly enough, Tshireletso Motlogelwa, the article's author, quotes from the early, unrevised version of "A"-8, rather than the versions which appeared from 1959 onward (compare pp. 48-9 of the U California/Johns Hopkins editions). So either he found the poem in a late-1930s New Masses (where this "workers' song" first appeared), or he's stumbled upon New Directions in Poetry and Prose 1938 (which printed all of "A"-8), or he's seen my LZ and the Poetry of Knowledge. For my part, I like to imagine contemporary Botswanan progressives finding sustenance in the back files of New Masses.

1 comment:

-kaplan said...

Fascinating. I'd also like to imagine that it came from _New Masses_, perhaps a wing of the "Cultural Front" that wandered abroad...