poetry notebook

Dear Mr. Paul Zukofsky,

Re: “Copyright Notice” http://www.z-site.net/copyright-notice-by-pz/

Little would make me happier than to see you enriched by sales of your father’s work. I also would have been very happy had your mother been made wealthy by sales of his (and, some if it, her) work. But this won’t happen simply by demanding payment. In fact, quite the contrary. So, after reading your “Notice” (without entering into dispute with your interpretations of copyright law) I have more questions than I did before reading it.

Most importantly:

Why are you crushing the potential popularity of your father’s poetry (and prose)? You say that his writings are your “property” and seem to have some kind of fantasy that you can make a lot of money from them by forcing grad students to pay even to quote them in papers they write about them. I can hear their adviser: “You want to do your thesis on Zukofsky? Oh, well, ok if you want to, but you’ll have to pay Paul to write about it.”

I love your father’s work, but I don’t think it will ever be popular enough to make you rich. And if you want to charge people for even quoting the work, who will quote it? How long will it take for the poetry’s natural readers to even hear about it? How will they ever come to desire to buy it and read it if they haven’t even seen a quotation from it? I’ve noticed that not even “A” is available in bookstore poetry sections anymore. I used to find it in stores everywhere. Of course, the poems of Eliot, who is quoted everywhere by all kinds of people, is in evidence everywhere in many different forms. Somebody’s making some real money there.

If you look at the poets who sell the most copies you will notice that, like Eliot, they are quoted everywhere. Quotation is advertising. Poets who aren’t quoted fade into obscurity. Who is going to pay to promote a poet by quoting snippets from his work? Not even I.

But, despite your insistence on “property” and the idea that your father’s work should provide you (and should have provided your mother) with a very comfortable living, you impoverish that very property’s value by trying to crush any expression of the work whatsoever that hasn’t greased your palms.

Do you dislike the work of Louis (and Celia) Zukofsky? Would you like to see it disappear?

I can only conclude, sadly, because I’ve always felt warmly toward you, that you simply wish to crush and defeat your father’s legacy. Possibly you’re jealous of it. Maybe you feel overshadowed by it and simply can’t tolerate it.

I can only tell you that it won’t work. His poetry will outlive you and the copyright: and it will be quoted freely and for free after he is “rediscovered” in some future where you aren’t interfering with it’s popularity. I am truly sad about this — nearly sick over it — that one of the greatest poets of the 20th Century, Louis Zukofsky, is being effectively withheld from the public by a son who seems to want to overshadow and crush it. I’d be so much happier if you got rich and the work was widely known!!!

If I’m wrong about your motives, excellent!! And, in that case, if you want Louis Zukofsky’s writings to be widely read, please learn more about marketing and expand the popularity of your father’s writings and make a lot of money. Increased sales of his books will result in more income… won’t it? Of course, I don’t know for sure. Will the UC Press / Johns Hopkins Press not pay you anything if they sell a large number of copies of “A”? Oh, certainly they will, unless somehow your arrangement with them is negative for you. But, in any case, your current stance will slowly but surely turn sales of “A” to zero and neither you nor anyone else will make any money from it. I’d be surprised if UC Press (and/or Johns Hopkins) didn’t simply let it go out of print soon. I’m very happy that I’ve already bought everything that your father wrote that’s been so far published — the work is likely to be soon unavailable for purchase for the rest of my life thanks to you.

In any case, whatever the truth of the copyright issue, the great poetry of Louis Zukofsky belongs to the ages.

Very sadly and sincerely yours,

Dirk Johnson
(a customer)

PS I can’t tell you how much I would love to hear an accomplished performance of “A-24.” But it will not be, I’m afraid.