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Title: Bottom: On Shakespeare (Wesleyan Centennial Edition of the Complete Critical Writings of Louis zukoFsky, Vol 3&4) by Louis Zukofsky, Celia Thaew Zukofsky ISBN: 0-8195-6548-2 Publisher: Wesleyan University Press Pub. Date: 01 July, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $39.95

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Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)

Rating: 5
Summary: Thought as Music
Comment: Of all the (countless) responses to the Bard by writers over the last four hundred years or so, this one may be the most idiosyncratic; it may also be the most intelligent, insightful and inspired. BOTTOM: ON SHAKESPEARE reminds me a little bit of Burton's THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY, first, in its encyclopedic bulk, and, second, in the preponderance of quotes in its pages. Louis Zukofsky was a world-class quoter (he's spiritual kin to Walter Benjamin, I think, who dreamed of writing-if that's the right word-a book composed entirely of quotations), and in BOTTOM, he cites everyone from Homer to Wittgenstein, and whole pages of Shakespeare, for the central purpose of elucidating what may be thought of as the book's thesis, which Zukofsky puts thus:

"Love is to reason as the eyes are to mind."

I don't pretend to understand entirely what that means. But the idea that to perceive something as it truly is requires love, or is the beginning of love, or both, is beautiful.

It's important to keep in mind that although he was a professor of English, widely read, and had an acute literary-critical gift, Zukofsky was, above all, an artist. A staggering amount of scholarship went into BOTTOM, but it is, in the end, a poetic response to Shakespeare, a poet's reply to a poet. By academic standards, therefore, BOTTOM is downright eccentric. An example. Elsewhere, Zukofsky writes, "And it is possible in imagination to divorce speech of all graphic elements, to let it become a movement of sounds." Thought as music. A writer as deeply ethical as Zukofsky would never say something like that if he didn't mean it, and so we find that the second part of BOTTOM, the culmination of his thought on Shakespeare, isn't critical prose, but a musical setting for PERICLES, composed by Celia Zukofsky, Louis's wife.

Obviously, this book isn't an introduction to Shakespeare. The student coming to grips with the Bard won't get much help here. Like Zukofsky's poetry, of which it's very much an extension, BOTTOM can be obscure and taxing. On the other hand, it's as beautiful as it is difficult. At every turn, some idea or turn of phrase will make the patient reader gasp (or sigh, I suppose, depending on one's temperament). For anyone really, vitally engaged with Shakespeare, for any fan of Zukofsky, and for anyone who really cares about poetry, five stars is too few to recommend BOTTOM: ON SHAKESPEARE.

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Title: A Test of Poetry (Wesleyan Centennial Edition of the Complete Critical Writing) by Louis Zukofsky, Robert Creeley ISBN: 0819564028 Publisher: Wesleyan University Press Pub. Date: 01 April, 2000 List Price(USD): $16.95