"A" By Louis Zukofsky

Ok. So, I’m a mellow kinda guy. I don’t get worked up very often, and when I do it’s usually because I’ve had far too little sleep, far too much coffee, and some ass-hat has just sat behind me on a peak-hour bus making loud conversations on his cell phone about how ‘Jonno, nah mate, Jonno. No, Jonno!!, no, not Mark, it’s Jonno. Yeah mate, nah, I’m on a BUS!!’ Put the goddam’ phone down you retarded douche-canoe! *pant pant*

 Anyway…

 My zen-like calm was punctured yesterday after the Poetry Foundation’s blog, Harriet pointed out , to the internet at large, a document written by Paul Zukofsky about his father’s work.

 PZ is the son of Louis Zukosky, the Objectivist poet. Louis is now sadly departed (1904-1978) and his copyright falls to his son, who has been making noises about copyright that Kenneth Goldsmith of the Harriet blog rightly describes as ‘draconian’.

All Louis and Celia Zukofsky is still copyright, and will remain so for many many years. I own all of these copyrights, and they are my property, and I insist upon deriving income from that property. For those of you convinced that LZ would find my stance abhorrent, the truth is that he kept all copyrights (initially in his name) as he had the rather absurd idea that said copyrights would be sufficient to allow for the economic survival of my mother, and their son. My stance is congruent with that hope.

Draconian and anachronistic? Yes, but this initial stance is, well, fair enough. He owns the estate, so he should get paid for it. Don’t steal copyrighted books, buy books legitimately. Paul Zukofsky’s attitude goes far beyond this, however, into something much more insidious, and, well, see for yourself:

Despite what you may have been told, you may not use LZ’s words as you see fit, as if you owned them, while you hide behind the rubric of “fair use”. “Fair use” is a very-broadly defined doctrine, of which I take a very narrow interpretation, and I expect my views to be respected. We can therefore either more or less amicably work out the fees that I demand; you can remove all quotation; or we can turn the matter over to lawyers, this last solution being the worst of the three, but one which I will use if I need to enforce my rights.

…

1– people who want to do their dissertation on LZ, or want to quote from him in their diss., must, if only as a common courtesy, inform me of their desire to use this material, and obtain my permission to do so. If you do that, and if I agree, the permission will be only for the purposes of the diss. and there will be no charge for limited use within the diss. You will not be allowed to distribute the diss. publicly. Distribution via on-line publication is not allowed. I urge you to keep quotation to a minimum, as the more quotation, the less likely I am to grant permission.

Paul Zukofsky is a small minded little douche-canoe who can kiss my postgraduate arse.

I can perhaps understand your misguided interest in literature, music, art, etc. I would be suspicious of your interest in Louis Zukofsky, but might eventually accept it. I can applaud your desire to obtain a job, any job, although why in your chosen so-called profession is quite beyond me; but one line you may not cross i.e. never never ever tell me that your work is to be valued by me because it promotes my father. Doing that will earn my life-long permanent enmity. Your self-interest(s) I may understand, perhaps even agree with; but beyond that, in the words of e.e.cummings quoting Olaf: “there is some s I will not eat”.

Paul Zukofsky is a Douche-Canoe

Paul Zukofks holds academia in obvious contempt. It’s a little boggling. I would be tempted to imagine that this is a hoax, some sort of satire. Hopefully this is the case, because otherwise PZ seeks to hold academic enquiry up for at least the duration of his own life. It is only by understanding the innovations of the past that we can forge the new culture of the future. I don’t care about promoting Louis Zukofsky. I DO care bout understanding him, but Paul ‘douche-canoe’ Zukofsky wants to throw a roadblock up to academic enquiry for the purpose of squeezing every last bloody penny out of his father’s corpse that he can. It’s sickening, if true.

 As the Harriet blog reported, the ‘digerati’ have already responded by putting Louis Zukofsky’s famous long work “A” online in full PDF format to be downloaded as a deliberate ‘screw you’ to PZ. I don’t agree, I’m not going to link to the file. I think you SHOULD go ahead and buy the work of the important poets. Poetry is hard enough to create a market for as it is, we need to maintain the viability of hardcopy publication for poetry. But if you get the chance to make a rude gesture at Paul Zukofsky any time, do it. It’ll feel SOOOOO good.

 ~Chris