Reading Z in 1936

This year New Directions reissued Louis Zukofsky's massive poem "A." I can't speak to the whole, but the first hundred pages deliver complex and, for Qlipothim, congenial compositions on revolutionary art and politics. Several times I have thought I should post passages here. But extracts from such a long and complex poem lose meaning in isolation.

But today I was reading those comments on the rebellions in England by the renowned Zzk. And thinking about how vacuous the self-packaging of the image-commodity celebrity leftist'is. Particularly it's self-celebration of the psychoanalytic complexities of its own relationship to corporate image-commodities, to misogynist movies and racist jokes, and its disappointment in the vulgar desires for tangible commodities evident in the rebellion.

Then I read Zukofsky, who has this to say in 1936:

Untiring action, but free
From the lie that it can take the place
of mass action.
We are not Xerxes who had the sea
scourged with chains.
But to determine the facts does not
mean to give up the struggle.
Learn, learn, learn!
Act, act act!
Be prepare, well and completely prepared
To make use, with all our forces,
Of the next revolutionary wave.
That is our job.



Good day,
The 'left' really
Thinks the International is a faithful Penelope.
Well, our International does not weave
during the day
To undo its work during the night. -
Thanks for such Marxism
Which immediately attributes all society
To its economic basis.


And I mistrust the sexual theories of the articles,
dissertations, pamphlets ..
In short that .. literature which
Flourishes in the dirty soil of society,
I mistrust those who are always contemplating
The several questions, like the Indian saint his
navel.
Arbitrary hypotheses .. personal need
To justify personal abnormality .. before
Middle class moralitym and to entreat its patience.