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Charles Reznikoff
Charles Reznikoff (August 31, 1894 – January 22, 1976) was an American poet best known for his long work, Testimony: The United States (1885–1915), Recitative (1934–1979). The term Objectivist was coined for him.[citation needed] The multi-volume Testimony was based on court records and explored the experiences of immigrants, black people and the urban and rural poor in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He followed this with Holocaust (1975), based on court testimony about Nazi death camps during World War II.
In 1930 Reznikoff married Marie Syrkin, a prominent Zionist and friend and biographer of Golda Meir. Although they did not live together at all times during the marriage, it lasted until Reznikoff's death.[citation needed]
When Louis Zukofsky was asked by Harriet Monroe to provide an introduction to what became known as the Objectivist issue of Poetry, he contributed his essay, Sincerity and Objectification: With Special Reference to the Work of Charles Reznikoff. This established the name of the loose-knit group of second-generation modernist poets and the two characteristics of their poetry: sincerity and objectification.
Charles Reznikoff was born in 1894 in a Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, the son of immigrants Sarah Yetta (Wolvovsky) Reznikoff and Nathan Reznikoff, who fled the Russian Empire and its pogroms.[citation needed] His Hebrew name was Ezekial, after his maternal grandfather. His father established a family business of manufacturing hats,[citation needed] and Reznikoff briefly worked there as a salesman in his 20s. He was young when he graduated from high school and had already started writing poetry.[citation needed] He spent a year studying journalism in graduate school at the University of Missouri, where Reznikoff realized he was interested in writing more than reporting news.[citation needed] He entered the law school of New York University in 1912 and graduated in 1916.[citation needed] He practiced law during the period 1916–1918. In 1918 as the United States had entered the Great War, he entered officer training school.[citation needed] He did not see active service before the end of the war.[citation needed]
Reznikoff worked for a time for his family's business as a hat salesman. He worked for a legal publishing house, where he wrote summaries of court records for legal reference books. This experience was to prove integral to his later writing.
From his teens, Reznikoff had been writing poetry, much of it influenced by the Imagists. He published his own work, using a second-hand press for which he set the type himself. Throughout his writing life, Reznikoff was always concerned to ensure that his work was published, even at his own expense. This appears to have been inspired by a family story of his grandfather, an unpublished Hebrew poet whose manuscripts were destroyed after his death, for fear of their falling into Russian hands.
Around the time[when?] the Objectivist issue of Poetry appeared, Reznikoff, Zukofsky and George Oppen set up "To Publishers" and later the Objectivist Press, essentially to publish their own work. Reznikoff had had some success with his 1930 novel By the Waters of Manhattan, and the new press published three titles by him, two that gathered together previously self-published work and the third a first installment of a long work called Testimony.
In early drafts, Testimony was a prose retelling of stories that Reznikoff had discovered while working on court records. Reznikoff found these accounts to give him insight into the story of America between 1885 and 1915, both in its diversity and its violence. Tellingly, he chose to omit the judgements, focusing on the twists and turns of the stories.
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Charles Reznikoff
Charles Reznikoff (August 31, 1894 – January 22, 1976) was an American poet best known for his long work, Testimony: The United States (1885–1915), Recitative (1934–1979). The term Objectivist was coined for him.[citation needed] The multi-volume Testimony was based on court records and explored the experiences of immigrants, black people and the urban and rural poor in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He followed this with Holocaust (1975), based on court testimony about Nazi death camps during World War II.
In 1930 Reznikoff married Marie Syrkin, a prominent Zionist and friend and biographer of Golda Meir. Although they did not live together at all times during the marriage, it lasted until Reznikoff's death.[citation needed]
When Louis Zukofsky was asked by Harriet Monroe to provide an introduction to what became known as the Objectivist issue of Poetry, he contributed his essay, Sincerity and Objectification: With Special Reference to the Work of Charles Reznikoff. This established the name of the loose-knit group of second-generation modernist poets and the two characteristics of their poetry: sincerity and objectification.
Charles Reznikoff was born in 1894 in a Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, the son of immigrants Sarah Yetta (Wolvovsky) Reznikoff and Nathan Reznikoff, who fled the Russian Empire and its pogroms.[citation needed] His Hebrew name was Ezekial, after his maternal grandfather. His father established a family business of manufacturing hats,[citation needed] and Reznikoff briefly worked there as a salesman in his 20s. He was young when he graduated from high school and had already started writing poetry.[citation needed] He spent a year studying journalism in graduate school at the University of Missouri, where Reznikoff realized he was interested in writing more than reporting news.[citation needed] He entered the law school of New York University in 1912 and graduated in 1916.[citation needed] He practiced law during the period 1916–1918. In 1918 as the United States had entered the Great War, he entered officer training school.[citation needed] He did not see active service before the end of the war.[citation needed]
Reznikoff worked for a time for his family's business as a hat salesman. He worked for a legal publishing house, where he wrote summaries of court records for legal reference books. This experience was to prove integral to his later writing.
From his teens, Reznikoff had been writing poetry, much of it influenced by the Imagists. He published his own work, using a second-hand press for which he set the type himself. Throughout his writing life, Reznikoff was always concerned to ensure that his work was published, even at his own expense. This appears to have been inspired by a family story of his grandfather, an unpublished Hebrew poet whose manuscripts were destroyed after his death, for fear of their falling into Russian hands.
Around the time[when?] the Objectivist issue of Poetry appeared, Reznikoff, Zukofsky and George Oppen set up "To Publishers" and later the Objectivist Press, essentially to publish their own work. Reznikoff had had some success with his 1930 novel By the Waters of Manhattan, and the new press published three titles by him, two that gathered together previously self-published work and the third a first installment of a long work called Testimony.
In early drafts, Testimony was a prose retelling of stories that Reznikoff had discovered while working on court records. Reznikoff found these accounts to give him insight into the story of America between 1885 and 1915, both in its diversity and its violence. Tellingly, he chose to omit the judgements, focusing on the twists and turns of the stories.