Being himself, however, really meant not just a Jew or just an American but both and neither…. An exile, he sits down by the waters of Manhattan to weep; a wry smile comes over his face, for he realizes that he is home. And then he really weeps. - L.S. Dembo
Charles Reznikoff was born in the Jewish neighborhood of Brownsville in Brooklyn, New York, to Nathan and Sarah Yetta (Wolvosky) Reznikoff, immigrants from Russia fleeing the pogroms of the 1880s. His father was in the millinery business and the family moved several times during Reznikoff’s childhood, often to non-Jewish neighborhoods, where he experienced the virulent anti-semitism that influenced his self-identification as an outsider and informed much of his later writing.
Reznikoff was intellectually precocious and entered high school three years ahead of schedule; he graduated from Brooklyn’s Boys High School at the age of 15. A year later, in 1910, he entered the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism, where he remained for a year before returning to New York. In 1912, he entered the New York University Law School; he was 18 years old. Although he graduated in 1915 and was admitted to the New York Bar a year later, he practiced law for a very short time and concentrated instead on his writing. In 1917, Reznikoff joined the ROTC at Columbia University, but the war ended before he completed his training.
He worked briefly for his father in the hat-making business, then as a freelance writer and editor. He also began publishing his poems and plays; however, very little of his work was critically or commercially successful. In 1930, Reznikoff married Marie Syrkin, a high school teacher. That same year, he published the novel By the Waters of Manhattan, a work that earned him a fair amount of recognition, but few royalties. In 1931, some of his poems were included in Poetry magazine’s special issue on the Objectivist movement edited by Louis Zukofsky, who also discussed Reznikoff’s work in his essay outlining the principles of the movement.
Economic conditions during the Great Depression forced Reznikoff to take a job for a legal publishing company as the editor of Corpus Juris, a reference book for lawyers. He left after a few years and returned to his writing career, by this time earning a sufficient amount of money to live on. During the 1940s, Reznikoff’s wife took a position at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, while he remained in Manhattan; the couple then lived apart except for weekends and holidays until his wife’s retirement from Brandeis in 1966 when she rejoined him in New York.
Reznikoff continued to write and publish throughout the 1960s and early 1970s until his death on January 22, 1976, after suffering a heart attack the previous day.
Charles Reznikoff’s first two volumes of verse, Rhythms (1918) and Rhythms II (1919) were both printed on a small press in his parents’ home. A year later, his first commercially produced volume, Poems, appeared, but most of the other poems from the early 1920s were published in periodicals. During this same period, Reznikoff was writing plays, some of them in verse, in addition to his poetry, but most of the plays were poorly received. In 1927, he issued Five Groups of Verse and Nine Plays, most of which had been published previously. Following that publication, he apparently gave up on play writing.
During the 1930s and early 1940s, he published only two more volumes of poetry: Jerusalem the Golden (1934) and Going To and Fro and Walking Up and Down (1941). His next important volume of poetry did not appear until 1962 when he published By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse; the title causes some confusion since he had earlier written a novel titled By the Waters of Manhattan.
Similar confusion arises between Testimony, a collection of prose narratives published in 1934, and the poetry volumes Testimony: The United States, 1885-1890: Recitative (1965) and Testimony: The United States, 1891-1900: Recitative (1968). Reznikoff’s work from the 1960s and 1970s includes By the Well of Living and Seeing, and The Fifth Book of the Maccabees (1969) and By the Well of Living & Seeing: New & Selected Poems, 1918-1973 (1974).
Although Reznikoff responded to the threat posed by the Nazis in the 1930s, notably in the poems In Memoriam, 1933 and “A Compassionate People,” his most powerful works on the fate of European Jews did not appear until much later with the publication of Holocaust in 1975, following a long silence on the subject after the war. Using the Nuremberg and Eichmann trials as source material, the volume transforms courtroom testimony into poetry. The first volume of Reznikoff’s collected poems, Poems 1918-1936, was published in 1976; however it would take another thirteen years for his complete poetic output to appear, as Poems 1918-1975: The Complete Poems of Charles Reznikoff (1989; 2005). And the two volumes of Testimony would not be published together until 2015.
Writer Paul Auster described Reznikoff as “a poet of the eye,” explaining that for Reznikoff “each poetic utterance is an emanation of the eye, a transcription of the visible into the brute, unciphered code of being. Which means that the act of writing is not so much an ordering of the real as a discovery of it.” Milton Hindus also notes the visual quality of Reznikoff’s work, contending that the poet had an ‘“eye for resemblances,’ which could take the most commonplace scene and transform it with an unforgettable metaphor.”
Rocco Marinaccio maintains that Reznikoff’s poetry was similar to the writings of the era’s crusading journalists; many of the things Reznikoff saw and reported to his readers involved the exposure of social injustice and inequality. According to Marinaccio, Reznikoff “spent a lifetime writing about the disenfranchised, relentlessly and incisively detailing the plights of the working class, women and children, racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants, and artists, many of them living in wretched poverty.”
As the child of Russian Jews who emigrated to the United States, Reznikoff wrote about Jewish themes, as well as themes of exile, of being cut off from the ethnic background of his parents while, at the same time, never quite fitting into American life. Thus, much of his work deals with loneliness and isolation; as Auster puts it, Reznikoff is “the poet as solitary wanderer, as man in the crowd, as faceless scribe,” who walks through the city space, observing it from the vantage point of an outsider, and recording those observations in his poetry.
Bob Perelman notes that while Reznikoff’s early writing involves the lives of Jewish immigrants in America, “his later poems tend to be short ruminations of a solitary walker noticing bushes, birds, clouds, pedestrians,” characterized by “loneliness” and “a touch of solipsism.” For Stephen Fredman, “the heart of the Jewish dilemmas in Charles Reznikoff’s writing” is best demonstrated by his treatment of the Hebrew language. Ranen Omer reports that although Reznikoff was “a thoughtful chronicler of the major currents in Jewish history,” as well as of his own lifetime, he rarely discussed zionism, thus offering “an alternative model of ethnic identity” for Jewish Americans apart from their relationship to Israel and/or the Holocaust.
Reznikoff’s poetic response to the Holocaust has been criticized as far too factual to convey the horror of the events. Robert Franciosi, however, refutes the charges that the presentation of documentary facts amounts to an oversimplification and dehumanization of the experiences of the victims. According to Franciosi, in his use of testimonies Reznikoff “does not surrender the emotional and moral authority with which they were delivered to austere factuality, does not sacrifice the witnesses’ humanity … to a naive gesture toward the ‘neutral’ documentation of historical or political events.”
Charles Bernstein calls Holocaust ”the most unrelentingly painful to read of Reznikoff’s work,” and at the same time believes that it is his “most problematic work at a technical—in the sense of aesthetic or formal—level.”
Reznikoff had used the documentary approach in the earlier two-volume work Testimony, which Bernstein calls “perhaps the darkest, and certainly most unrelenting, of modernist long poems.” The work, like Holocaust, is based on court records, in this case detailing racism, violence, negligence, and injustice in American life. Auster claims that Testimony is “at once a kaleidoscopic vision of American life and the ultimate test of Reznikoff’s poetic principles.”
David Guest discusses the effectiveness of both Testimony and Holocaust, explaining that both “are notable for describing emotionally charged events in voices lacking in emotional force.” Yet despite the “flat tone of these narratives” they nonetheless “manage to convey powerful emotion.”
Charles Reznikoff received the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1971. After his death in 1976, Reznikoff’s publisher John Martin, of Black Sparrow Press, discovered an unpublished novel among his papers. This was published as The Manner Music, with an introduction by Robert Creeley.
Source: Poetry Foundation
Domestic Scenes
BY CHARLES REZNIKOff
1
It was nearly daylight when she gave birth to the child,
lying on a quilt
he had doubled up for her.
He put the child on his left arm
and took it out of the room,
and she could hear the splashing water.
When he came back
she asked him where the child was.
He replied: “Out there—in the water.”
He punched up the fire
and returned with an armload of wood
and the child,
and put the dead child into the fire.
She said: “O John, don't!”
He did not reply
but turned to her and smiled.
2
Late at night, their sow rooted open the door of their cabin,
and husband and wife
quarreled over driving her out.
His wife knocked him down with an iron shovel.
He started for his breeches and said,
“If I had my knife, I'd cut your throat,”
and she ran out the door.
He shut the door after her
and propped it closed with a stick of wood.
When she was found, she was lying on her face,
frozen to death. The weather extremely cold
and where she lay
the snow was about eighteen inches deep.
When she left the cabin, she was barefoot
and had very little clothing. The way she took
led through briers
and there were drops of blood on the snow—
where the briers had torn her legs from the knees down—
and bits of clothing that had been torn off;
at one place
she had struck her ankle against the end of a log
and it bled freely.
3
Mrs. Farborough went into her brother's house,
leaving her husband a short distance from it—
he was the best man of the neighborhood for strength—
and, without speaking to anyone,
seized a tin cup.
Her sister-in-law said it seemed as if she took a good deal of authority there.
Mrs. Farborough replied she took enough to get her things,
and would also take her teakettle.
Mrs. Eller told her to take them
and get out of the house
and stay out.
Mrs. Farborough did go out
but soon returned with a stone—
as large as her fist—
which she held under her apron,
and sat down,
remarking that she intended to stay a while
just for aggravation.
Farborough then approached the house with a stone in each hand
and, when near it, sat on a log.
After a moment or two,
he sprang into the house,
the stones still in his hands.
At this, his wife threw the stone she held under her apron
at her sister-in-law:
missed and struck the side of the house near her head.
The women clinched and fell to the floor,
Mrs. Farborough on top,
hitting Mrs. Eller in the face with her fist.
Eller went up to Farborough and said:
“Brother Martin,
take your wife out of here,
and I will take care of mine.
Let us have no fuss!”
And he started forward to part the women,
still fighting.
Farnborough pushed him back:
“God damn you, stand back,
or I will kill the last Goddamn one of you!”
and lifted his right hand,
holding the stone.
He turned to look at the women,
and Eller shot him in the back with a pistol,
just where his suspenders crossed.
4
He and his wife were members of a society
known as Knights and Ladies of Honor.
The life of each member was insured for two thousand dollars—
to go to widow or widower.
He had to borrow money to pay his dues
and had just been defeated for town marshal;
and now his wife was sick.
The Knight of Honor was seen in a saloon with a Negro
who used to work for him;
then the two were seen going into an alley.
Here he gave the Negro a quarter
and asked him to go to the drugstore
and buy a small bottle of strychnine.
If the druggist asked the Negro why he wanted it,
he was to say to kill wolves on a farm.
The Negro asked him what he really wanted it for
and he said to poison the dogs
belonging to a neighbor where a girl was working
whom he wanted to visit at night.
The Negro bought him the bottle,
and he told the Negro that if questioned about it
he must say that he put it in the pocket of his overcoat
and left the coat hanging in a saloon,
and that the bottle was taken from his pocket
by someone.
When his wife asked for the quinine
she used as a medicine,
he went to the mantelpiece
where he had placed a package of quinine
bought the day before
and poured some of the strychnine into a spoonful of cold coffee.
She thought the powder had a peculiar look,
and tried to dissolve it
by stirring it with her finger.
He assured her it was quinine
bought where he had always bought it;
and she drank it.
Source: Testimony Volume 1 The United States (1885-1915) Recitative (David R. Godine/Black Sparrow Press, 1978)
Allen Ginsberg: Then in this book (Charles Reznikoff Poems 1920) is the beginning of some amazing poems which are narrative poems which tell stories which have the compass of an entire short story or even a novel, but in twelve lines or twenty. The key here seems to be encompassing the trans-shiftings of time, getting one generation to another generation, the whole story of a generation (like you get in (Charles) Dickens or (William Makepeace Thackery), one or two or three generations, but all condensed into twelve lines with the active details so perfectly selected that it jumps from epiphanous traumatic moment to epiphanous traumatic moment.So, on page 32, my favorite, or the first poem that I read of Reznikoff that actually made me cry, it was so truthful and so clear.
(11) She sat by the window opening into the airshaft./and looked across the parapet/ at the new moon./ She would have taken the hairpins out of her carefully-coiffed hair,/ and thrown herself on the bed in tears;/but he was coming and her mouth had to be pinned into a smile/If he would have her, she would marry whatever he was,/ A knock. She lit the gas and opened the door./Her aunt and the man – skin loose under his eyes, the face slashed/with wrinkles./ “Come in,” she said as gently as she could and smiled.”
Well, what you’ve got there is the directly observed detail, unpoetic for it’s time (“airshaft”, or “window opening into the airshaft”) – a bit of poetry here (“looked across the parapet/ at the new moon” – a little classic, elegant eye view set next to the airshaft) – “hairpins…her carefully-coifed hair” – totally modern – “and thrown herself on the bed in tears” – (well, that could be Ophelia or Shakespeare) – “but he was coming and her mouth had to be pinned into a smile – (that’s a little poetic. that’s the only somewhat fake note in this poem) – “her mouth had to be…”, except that it’s…
Peter Orlovsky: He’s a tailor, remember. It’s subjective.
AG: Yeah, it’s all these immigrant ladies with pins in their hair and in their..
Student: (Isn’t it obvious?)
AG: It’s obvious, yes, forced into a smile, but kept in a smile, pinned in a smile – But is this poeticism or is it appropriate?
Student: It seems very simple
AG: It is pretty simple. (But) tricky.
Student: She’s got pins in her hair.
AG: Yeah. All of those immigrant ladies had pins all over. They worked in pin factories. So there is some home-made quality to that which makes it a little more genuine, I would say.
Student: It works a little better than (the line in a previous poem), “food, the great comforter”
AG: Yes, well, “food the great comforter” has a kind of basic… Anyway – “if he would have her, she would marry whatever he was,/ A knock. She lit the gas..” – (which is really perfect (whenever he brings in the gas you really have this period-piece, time-capsule) – it’s like a movie there) – “Her aunt and the man – skin loose under his eyes, the face slashed/with wrinkles” – (I mean, that’s neither modern or un-modern – that’s just a good description) – “skin loose under his eyes”
Student: “(S)lashed” might be a little….
AG: Well, “slashed/ with wrinkles”(I’ve always wondered about “pinned” and “slashed” – those are a little violent)
Anyway, what you can see and hear, however, is how close he is to becoming perfectly ordinary mind, how close he is (to) becoming no poetry at all, how close the thing is to becoming, like, some totally tearful, sad completely tragic, completely understandable, completely known, completely empathetic grounded piece of information about what happens – without even bothering whether it’s a poem. I mean you don’t even need to begin to bother.
Poetry imitates this. This is so true that a poetics will rise to imitate this kind of writing. Of course, the book is called… Rhythms, I guess, or – what is it called? Poems – they’re called Poems, the earlier books are called Rhythms he was just experimenting with spoken speech rhythms.
