Ezra Pound, in one of his moments of penetrating lucidity about literature, dedicated Guide to Kultur (1931), “To Louis Zukofsky and Basil Bunting, strugglers in the desert.” These three men, who at the time of the dedication seemed like radical outsiders, marginal figures conspicuously at odds with popular conceptions of literary accomplishment, are now properly recognized as giants of Modernism, although Zukofsky has retained a reputation, even among those writers who value his work, as (in Guy Davenport’s formulation), “a poet’s poet’s poet.” The implication that Zukofsky’s work is of a strange quality, a rare species requiring a special sensibility for appreciation, has restricted Zukofsky’s readership, and even the academic

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First published 05 January 2005

Citation: Lewis, Leon. "Louis Zukofsky". The Literary Encyclopedia. 5 January 2005.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4853, accessed 9 February 2010.]