I Like This Zukofsky Valentine, But....

he gives a somewhat decent reading of it. Brief as this poem is, it's a little bracelet made of pieces of mirror strung together; it's composed of recontextualizing lines which add great negative capability.

I find that often poets are the worst readers of their own work, with a small subset being the shining exception. This is weird, because to compose lines which demand such nuanced caesuras, such weighted words and phrases, and those meant to be read with legerete, obviously requires prosodic discernment. So why does it vanish so often when a poet reads his or her work? Nerves? Indifference to the act of making a recording? Embarrassment to express emotion publicly? I suppose the reasons are different from poet to poet.

Here Zukofsky accelerates like a kid in a souped-up Civic late for a lay, and the negative capability is lost...the wryness of the last line informing us that love (even with all its various tragedies) is indeed musical (and this line refers antecedently to other elements in the poem) is lost in his quick reading.

The funny and grim and smart way the poem insists the real beauty is in the transcendent movement into the privileged view from above Love, looking down on the array of detritus it leaves, is lost!

Okay, I just relistened to it, and he didn't perform it that badly. I guess he did manage to get some of the ambiguity with a slight caesura before the last line.

It's just when you have a strong, extremely short poem, slower is better. The less there is, the more you want to give readers the chance to follow, because at the actual reading they are only going to hear it once. Here, I benefitted from being able to replay the recording at Penn.

The poem's sound in the last line defies grammatical orthodoxy. Because you can only choose one on the page: either its or it's. It's a bind. But sound revels in homophones here as in his poetry often. And the ear choses both, which increases the worth of the poem.

Sound is like Eros: it can have it both ways at once and be equally convinced and convincing. In this, sound is insane and erotic. Like Cazwell, sound is a "two-timey animal." Sound is erotomanic, really.

And yes, he does sound like an old woman, but it's not fair to criticize that. That's just age. But a very anile voice!

Enjoy. I'll try to find the text of this. I did encounter it online before.

[THIS LINK HAS BEEN REMOVED. YOU CAN HEAR THE RECORDING BY GOING TO UPENN'S WEBSITE.]