I have a secret life
that even I don't know about yet.


-Kenny

Saturday

Secret Life of Charles reznikoff part 1

Charles used to walk around New York city late at night. These days when I think about that I get a little scared. I think if I walk out there at night I will get attacked, and I don't mind being attacked, but it is nice to not be attacked. Charles was a sensor. He moved through the city logically digesting the variety of input he encountered. I think just about all of Charles life is sort of a secret. He had a very jovial voice. The kind that may be used as a voice for a cartoon mouse. He had a happy kind of chuckle, and he just beamed kindness. I look at Charles as a collector and a transcriber. He spent much of his life studying and being involved with law. He transcribed court cases into poems in testimony and transcribed journals into poems in Holocaust. his short poems are like the urban hiaku. When I think about his lines, I imagine a flock of bulbs surrounding a excavation. but I cannot recall how charles worded it to make it a visual memory for me. Even though I never seen that. I even return to it, like a memory from my distance. Charles. I will continue on you more in depth. Charles, witness. He knew how important it was to witness at all times. Even in daily life. This is part one of a few. Charles I will return to you soon. Charlie. The captin of the mighty ducks. Reznikoff is a kettle that whistles and continues to whistle. I lean in to the whistling, I hear short phrases without metrognomes. I once saw a picture of charles on a bus with bill carlos williams. he and bill we on the bus looking at a broadsheet. They both had wives there. There were three other people on the bus. It may have been a trolly. They looked so happy. Happy Charles reznikoff day, for no reason. this is charles reznikoff week. and on this blog we will celebrate by exploring him more in depth, as a person writing.

Of course, this will be done with a cinematic eye, because I cannot move off from my hollyroots.

2 comments:

  1. I ain't hear about no charles reznikoff week ever.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Charles Reznikoff (August 31, 1894 - January 22, 1976) was the poet for whom the term Objectivist was first coined.

    ReplyDelete