from, Jerusalem the Golden (1934)

Poems:

The Hebrew of...
Hellenist
The moon shines...
Shameless moon...
These days...
The river is...
At night walking...
Rails in the subway...

Bibliographic Note:

Jerusalem the Golden was published by the Objectivist Press from 10 West Thirty-sixth Street, New York, in 1934.  The Press consisted of Reznikoff, George Oppen, and Louis Zukofsky.  It was an outgrowth of Zukofsky's editorial work for the "Objectivist" number of Poetry (February 1931) and his An "Objectivist" Anthology published in France in 1932 by George and Mary Oppen under the imprint "To Publishers."  The editorial statement on the back of the dust wrapped was composed by Reznikoff; it reads: 

The Objectivist Press is an organization of writers who
are publishing their own work and that of other writers
whose work they think ought to be read.

The wrapper also listed an Advisory Board consisting of Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams, with Zukofsky as "Sec'y."  Already in 1934 the Press had published Williams' Collected Poems, with a preface by Wallace Stevens, and Reznikoff's prose work Testimony, with an introduction by Kenneth Burke. 

Jerusalem the Golden bears the following epigraph and dedication:

TO MARIE

Sunt bona, sunt quaedam mediocra, sunt mala plura
Quae legis hic: aliter non fit, Avite, libre.
(Martial, Lib. I:XVI)

The acknowledgement thanks "the editors of Contempo, Pagany, Poetry, and The Menorah Journal for permission to reprint whatever they have used." 

Return to the Charles Reznikoff Homepage at the EPC

Material from
POEMS 1918-1975: THE COMPLETE POEMS OF CHARLES REZNIKOFF Copyright © 1977
by Marie Syrkin Reznikoff and reprinted with the permission of Black Sparrow Press.