1 Who were the “Objectivists”?
In their simplest definition, the “Objectivists” were a group of thirty modernist writers gathered and presented by Louis Zukofsky in two explicitly-titled “Objectivist” publications: the February 1931 issue of Chicago’s Poetry magazine, and An “Objectivists” Anthology, published the following year in France. Beginning in the mid-1930s, many of the writers identified as “Objectivist” ceased writing poetry or faded into obscurity until the early 1960s, when several members of the group reemerged as active poets and enjoyed a surge of attention and retroactive identification as “Objectivists.”
Core “Objectivists”
The seven core “Objectivist” writers featured on this website: Louis Zukofsky, Charles Reznikoff, George Oppen, William Carlos Williams, Carl Rakosi, Basil Bunting and Lorine Niedecker, were connected through a shifting web of friendship and joint publication beginning in the mid-1920s and stretching into the early twenty-first century. All of these writers published important work after 1962, and of the seven, all but Lorine Niedecker appeared in both of the foundational “Objectivist” publications. I recognize that my decision to refer to Niedecker as an “Objectivist” poet despite her absence from the early “Objectivist” publishing ventures and group publications could be contested, so some justification for this decision may be helpful.[1] Niedecker became attracted to the group, and to Zukofsky in particular, after reading the February 1931 issue of Poetry in her local library. This encounter prompted Niedecker to write directly to Zukofsky sometime in mid-late 1931, and Niedecker’s first submission to Poetry magazine, dated November 5, 1931, mentions her having been encouraged to do so by Zukofsky.[2] Niedecker’s first letter to Zukofsky marked the commencement of an intense, lifelong friendship, developed through frequent correspondence for nearly 40 years.[3] Late in 1933, Niedecker traveled to New York City for an extended stay with Zukofsky, during which time she met Charles Reznikoff, George and Mary Oppen, and (probably) William Carlos Williams. In August 1934, Zukofsky wrote to T.C. Wilson, a young graduate student at the University of Michigan who was editing an issue of Bozart-Westminster along with Ezra Pound, indicating that he “[c]onsider[ed] it a grave error not to have included her in Objectivists Anthology, but she has travelled some since 1932.”[4] Later in life, Niedecker met both Carl Rakosi and Basil Bunting, who in particular had been a longtime admirer of her writing. While I would not go so far as Rakosi in describing Niedecker as the “most Objectivist of all of us,”[5] it is my view that Niedecker, by virtue of both her personal relationships with other members of the group and her poetic sensibilities, warrants inclusion among the core “Objectivists.” Two other writers, Robert McAlmon and Kenneth Rexroth, also appeared in both of the original “Objectivist” publications, but I have