Ezra Pound: University of Delaware Library.

Pound and the Objectivists

Ezra Pound’s short-lived journal The Exile, which ran for four issues in 1927 and 1928, published a poem by the young New York poet Louis Zukofsky. Zukofsky was a great admirer of Pound’s and looked to him as a mentor. He established a group of poets called the Objectivists, whose mission Zukofsky described as “desire for what is objectively perfect, inextricably the direction of historic and contemporary particulars.” Other members of the group included Basil Bunting, William Carlos Williams (whose Collected Poems 1921-1931 was published by the Objectivist Press), and George Oppen, who financed the Press. Pound included all of these poets, along with Eliot, Cummings, Marianne Moore, and others, in his Active Anthology of 1933. Zukofsky’s epic poem “A” is considered, alongside the Cantos and Paterson, as one of the more indefinable and unique products of twentieth century poetry.

  • Basil Bunting. Redimiculum matellarum.
    Milan: [s.n.], 1930.
    (Milano: Stampato nelle Officine de la Grafica Moderna)
  • Louis Zukofsky, ed. An “Objectivists” Anthology. Le Beausset, France; New York: To, Publishers, 1932.
  • George Oppen. Discrete Series. New York: Objectivist Press, 1934.
  • William Carlos Williams. Collected Poems 1921-1931. New York: Objectivist Press, 1934.
  • Louis Zukofsky. First Half of “A”-9. New York: [The Author], 1940.
  • Louis Zukofsky. 55 Poems. Prairie City, Illinois: Press of James A. Decker, 1941.