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1 Who were the “Objectivists”?

In their simplest definition, the “Objectivists” were a group of thirty modernist writers gathered and presented by Louis Zukofsky in two explicitly-titled “Objectivist” publications: the February 1931 issue of Chicago’s Poetry magazine, and An “Objectivists” Anthology, published the following year in France. Beginning in the mid-1930s, many of the writers identified as “Objectivist” ceased writing poetry or faded into obscurity until the early 1960s, when several members of the group reemerged as active poets and enjoyed a surge of attention and retroactive identification as “Objectivists.”

Core “Objectivists”

The seven core “Objectivist” writers featured on this website: Louis Zukofsky, Charles Reznikoff, George Oppen, William Carlos Williams, Carl Rakosi, Basil Bunting and Lorine Niedecker, were connected through a shifting web of friendship and joint publication beginning in the mid-1920s and stretching into the early twenty-first century. All of these writers published important work after 1962, and of the seven, all but Lorine Niedecker appeared in both of the foundational “Objectivist” publications. I recognize that my decision to refer to Niedecker as an “Objectivist” poet despite her absence from the early “Objectivist” publishing ventures and group publications could be contested, so some justification for this decision may be helpful.[1] Niedecker became attracted to the group, and to Zukofsky in particular, after reading the February 1931 issue of Poetry in her local library. This encounter prompted Niedecker to write directly to Zukofsky sometime in mid-late 1931, and Niedecker’s first submission to Poetry magazine, dated November 5, 1931, mentions her having been encouraged to do so by Zukofsky.[2] Niedecker’s first letter to Zukofsky marked the commencement of an intense, lifelong friendship, developed through frequent correspondence for nearly 40 years.[3] Late in 1933, Niedecker traveled to New York City for an extended stay with Zukofsky, during which time she met Charles Reznikoff, George and Mary Oppen, and (probably) William Carlos Williams. In August 1934, Zukofsky wrote to T.C. Wilson, a young graduate student at the University of Michigan who was editing an issue of Bozart-Westminster along with Ezra Pound, indicating that he “[c]onsider[ed] it a grave error not to have included her in Objectivists Anthology, but she has travelled some since 1932.”[4] Later in life, Niedecker met both Carl Rakosi and Basil Bunting, who in particular had been a longtime admirer of her writing. While I would not go so far as Rakosi in describing Niedecker as the “most Objectivist of all of us,”[5] it is my view that Niedecker, by virtue of both her personal relationships with other members of the group and her poetic sensibilities, warrants inclusion among the core “Objectivists.” Two other writers, Robert McAlmon and Kenneth Rexroth, also appeared in both of the original “Objectivist” publications, but I have chosen to exclude them from my list of core “Objectivists,” and discuss the reasons for this decision at greater length below.

Speaking purely in terms of the lives of the core “Objectivists,” there are a number of biographical similarities. The group’s geographic center was New York City, and though all seven were never in the area at the same time, all core members either lived in the city or spent significant periods of time there between 1928 and 1935.[6] Four of the group were Jewish,[7] four were the children of American immigrants,[8] and they were generally non-academic; apart from Zukofsky, none held graduate degrees connected to literature or university affiliations of any kind until the 1960s, when some members of the group began to be invited to fill artist-in-residence positions at various American universities.[9] With the exception of Williams and Reznikoff, all were of the same ‘generation,’ having been born between 1900 and 1908.[10] Of the five born after the turn of the century, Basil Bunting was the eldest and George Oppen the youngest, with Niedecker, Rakosi, and Zukofsky having being born during the eight month span from May 1903 and January 1904.[11] Not surprisingly, considering his seniority relative to the rest of the group, Williams was also the first of the “Objectivists” to die, in 1963, just as many of the writers who had been published with him as “Objectivists” were beginning to reemerge to greater public notice.[12] The last surviving “Objectivist” was Rakosi, who published his final volume of poetry in 1999, and continued sending new work in magazines and giving interviews until shortly before his death, aged 100, on June 25, 2004.

In addition to their shared publication efforts, the “Objectivists” were also loosely united by shared political and poetic affinities. In contradistinction to Pound, Eliot, and Cummings, three of the most prominent American modernist poets of the era, each of the “Objectivists” was leftist in their politics, with each generally expressing Marxist, socialist, or Progressive sympathies.[13] Their poetics might be described as sympathetically heterogeneous, with Ezra Pound and the imagist tradition serving as important common touchstones for the group.

 

  1. Jenny Penberthy and other attentive readers of Niedecker’s poetry have long noted her intellectual and poetic independence, including surrealist tendencies, of which Zukofsky did not approve, in both her earliest and latest poetry. See Penberthy in How2 and both Ruth Jennison and Rachel Blau DuPlessis’ contributions to Radical Vernacular (pp. 131-179). ↵
  2. That letter reads, in full: “Dear Miss Monroe, Mr. Zukofsky encourages me to send some of my poems to you to be considered for “Poetry”. Very truly yours, Lorine Niedecker.” Niedecker to Harriet Monroe in Poetry: A Magazine of Verse Records 1895-1961, Box 18, Folder 2, University of Chicago Special Collections. ↵
  3. Niedecker and Zukofsky conducted one of the deepest, most fruitful, and longest lasting epistolary friendships among writers of which I know. They destroyed much of their correspondence, but a significant portion of the surviving letters from Niedecker were collected and edited by Jenny Penberthy in Niedecker and the Correspondence with Zukofsky 1931–1970, published in 1993 by Cambridge University Press. Fragments of Zukofsky’s side of the correspondence are held by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. ↵
  4. I am grateful to Jenny Penberthy for bringing this letter to my attention in September 2018. The rest of the letter is full of detailed, though qualified, praise for Niedecker, including the assertion that Niedecker was “the only woman in the U.S.A. as far as I know now writing poetry, with the exception of Marianne Moore – and promising more of a base to build on than Marianne. Suggest that you take something by her whether you like it or not, or whether E.P. [Ezra Pound] likes it or not — such exceptions should be made sometimes so as not to risk dogma.” Zukofsky’s letters to Wilson are held in the T.C. Wilson papers at Yale University. ↵
  5. Quoted in Bird, 71 ↵
  6. Apart from a stint at graduate school in Madison, Wisconsin during the 1930-1931 academic year and a trip to visit Pound and other artistic friends in Europe in the summer of 1933, Zukofsky spent the entirety of these years in New York City. Reznikoff lived in New York City for his entire life, apart from a year at journalism school in Missouri (the 1910-1911 academic year), a cross-country trip selling hats for his parents’ business and extended stay in Los Angeles from April-June of 1931, and a two year stint working in Hollywood for his friend Al Lewin (from March 1937 through June 1939). The Oppens arrived in New York City in 1928, living briefly in Greenwich Village before taking a room at the Madison Square Hotel (on the corner of Madison Avenue and 26th Street, near the north east corner of Madison Square Park) for the rest of the winter. They lived briefly with Zukofsky’s close friends Ted and Kate Hecht on Staten Island in the spring, before renting a small house in New Rochelle harbor, the city where George had been born. They returned to San Francisco at the end of the summer in 1929, and lived a rented house in Belvedere for a year before leaving for France in the summer of 1930 around the same time that Zukofsky left New York for Madison. The Oppens arrived in Le Havre, and stayed in France until early in 1933, when they left Paris to return to New York, taking an apartment in Brooklyn Heights near Zukofsky. The Oppens lived in New York from 1933 until the early 1940s, when they moved to Detroit. From 1913 until their deaths, Williams and his wife Flossie made their home some 25 miles northwest of Manhattan at 9 Ridge Road in Rutherford, New Jersey, from which location Williams made frequent visits to the city. Carl Rakosi lived in New York City from 1924 to 1925 and again from 1935 to 1940. Bunting lived in New York City for the last half of 1930: he and his first wife, Marian Culver, were married on Long Island on July 9, 1930 and lived in Brooklyn Heights through January 1931, when Bunting’s six-month visa expired and the couple returned to Rapallo, Italy. Although Zukofsky was in Madison during most of Bunting’s time in New York City, Bunting met Williams, René Taupin, and others in Zukofsky’s circle, and met Zukofsky in person when Zukofsky returned to the city for the winter holidays. Niedecker came to New York City for the first time in late 1933, and over the next several years would spend several months in the city, living with Zukofsky during her sometimes lengthy visits. ↵
  7. Zukofsky, Reznikoff, Oppen, and Rakosi. ↵
  8. Zukofsky’s parents immigrated from what is now Lithuania, Reznikoff’s parents immigrated from Russia, Rakosi was born in Germany and immigrated from Hungary when he was six years old, and Williams’ parents had immigrated from Puerto Rico, though his father had been born in England. ↵
  9. Zukofsky earned a master’s degree in English from Columbia University in June 1924, writing his thesis on the writings of the historian Henry Adams. In February 1946, he began a teaching position as an English instructor at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (now operating as the New York University Tandon School of Engineering), where he taught until his retirement in May 1965. Reznikoff attended journalism school for a year at the University of Missouri and considered pursuing a Ph.D. in history before enrolling in law school, earning his LLB from New York University in 1915 and being admitted to the bar the following year. Reznikoff took a few postgraduate courses in law, but never earned an advanced degree. Oppen dropped out of Oregon State Agricultural College (now Oregon State University) after he was suspended and Mary was expelled from school for their relationship. Neither George or Mary earned university degrees. Williams attended medical school at the University of Pennsylvania, where he befriended classmates Ezra Pound and Hilda Doolittle [H.D.], graduating in 1906 and filling internships at two New York hospitals and pursuing advanced study in pediatrics in Leipzig, Germany. Rakosi attended the University of Chicago for a year before transferring to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in English in 1924 and a master’s degree in industrial psychology in 1925. Rakosi attended a wide range of graduate programs in the 1920s and 1930s, briefly enrolling in both the Ph.D. program in English literature and law school at the University of Texas at Austin and medical school at the University of Texas Medical Department in Galveston but leaving each program before earning a degree. After choosing a career as a social worker, Rakosi attended the Graduate School of Social Work at Tulane University in New Orleans and eventually earned his master’s degree in Social Work from the University of Pennsylvania in 1940. Between 1952 and 1954, he would complete course work in the Social Work Ph.D. program at the University of Minnesota, but he never completed the doctorate. Bunting was enrolled at the London School of Economic from October 1919 to April 1923, but was very casual in his studies and left without earning a degree. Niedecker attended Beloit College from 1922-1924, but family financial pressures forced her to leave without completing her degree. ↵
  10. Williams was born in Rutherford, New Jersey on September 17, 1883, and Reznikoff was born in New York City on August 31, 1894. ↵
  11. Bunting was born on March 1, 1900 in Scotswood-on-Tyne, a western suburb of Newcastle, England; Niedecker was born on May 12, 1903 on Blackhawk Island near Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin; Rakosi was born on November 6, 1903 in Berlin, Germany; Zukofsky was born on January 23, 1904 in New York City; Oppen was born on April 24, 1908 in New Rochelle, New York. ↵
  12. William Carlos Williams died March 4, 1963, aged 79; Lorine Niedecker died December 31, 1970, aged 67; Charles Reznikoff died January 22, 1976, aged 81; Louis Zukofsky died May 12, 1978, aged 74; George Oppen died July 7, 1984, aged 76; Basil Bunting died April 17, 1985, aged 85; Carl Rakosi died June 25, 2004, aged 100. For comparison, Ezra Pound was born on October 30, 1885 in Hailey, Idaho and died on November 1, 1972 in Venice, Italy, aged 87. ↵
  13. Oppen and Rakosi were both members of the Communist Party of the United States of America in New York City during the last half of the 1930s, but neither remained an active member of the party by the end of the decade. Zukofsky appears to have applied for membership in the Communist Party in 1925, when his close friend Whittaker Chambers began to ingratiate himself with the party’s New York leadership, but others recalled that his application was rejected, though the influence of Marxist ideas on Zukofsky remained prominent in his poetry and private letters through the late 1930s and is clear in his editorial decisions, both in regards to who he selected for inclusion in the “Objectivist” publications and afterward. In 1934 and 1935, Zukofsky spent several months preparing A Worker’s Anthology (though never published, many of the poems he gathered for this manuscript made their way into his A Test of Poetry), joined the anti-fascist (and Communist-affiliated) League of American Writers and worked briefly as an unpaid poetry editor for the prominent Communist-affiliated literary magazine New Masses. He and Bunting both argued politics with the fascist-sympathizing Pound in their letters throughout the 30s, with Zukofsky taking up more Marxist-Leninist positions and Bunting more anarcho-socialist ones. In a July 1938 letter to Pound, Zukofsky wrote: “Can’t guess what Kulchah is about, but if you want to dedicate yr. book to a communist (me) and a British-conservative-antifascist-imperialist (Basil), I won’t sue you for libel and I suppose you know Basil. So dedicate” (Pound/Zukofsky, 195). Zukofsky’s multi-hybrid classification of Bunting is a good sign of the difficulty even his closest friends experienced in classifying his political views. Bunting attended a Quaker secondary school and was imprisoned as a conscientious objector during the first World War and for several years as a young adult was, like his father, a dues-paying Fabian Socialist. His mature political views, while largely uncategorizable, resemble something of a fusion between socialism and anarchism, though he was perhaps the most suspicious of ideology of the whole group, arguing strenuously for the separation of literature from both political and economic motives and ends. A flavor of his independent-mindedness comes through in a 1954 to Dorothy Pound: “our only hope for our children is to destroy uniformity, centralization, big states and big factories and give men a chance to vary and live without more interference than it is the nature of their neighbors to insist on” (quoted in Basil Bunting, 12). Williams’ politics might be best described as democratic populist, and Niedecker was sympathetic to both the strain of Progressivism led by Wisconsin politician Robert La Follette and Henry Wallace as well as the socialism of William Morris. For more on Niedecker’s politics, see: http://steelwagstaff.info/lorine-niedecker-and-the-99/. Reznikoff was the least overtly political of the group, though his writing is profoundly sympathetic to human suffering and what we would today refer to as social justice concerns. He did also work for seventeen years in an editorial capacity on the Labor Zionist journal Jewish Frontier alongside his more politically engaged wife Marie Syrkin, who was the daughter of Nahum and Bassnya Osnos, two prominent Socialist Zionists, as well as a close friend of the Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. ↵

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