Episode 41 - Charles Reznikoff: poet as witness

In this extended episode I talk about the American poet, Charles Reznikoff, and about the two movements or trends in modern poetry with which he was associated - ‘imagism’ and ‘objectivism’ – and which help us to understand something of Reznikoff’s beliefs and approach as a poet. Please note: one of the poems quoted in the talk is titled, Holocaust, and contains disturbing verbatim accounts from the Nuremberg Military Tribunal of atrocities committed during the Second World War.

Transcript

Charles Reznikoff was born in 1894 in Brooklyn, New York, and he spent most of his life in and around his native city. His parents, Nathan and Sarah, were Jewish immigrants who had fled the Russian pogroms of the 1880s. Reznikoff encountered very strong anti-semitism as his family moved house a number of times, often into non-Jewish areas. This early exposure to anti-semitism may have contributed to Reznikoff’s profound sense of himself as an outsider and to his poetry practice as an observer of life. He was a precocious child, and he entered high school three years ahead of schedule. A year later, at age 16, he began to study journalism at the University of Missouri. In 1912, when he was 18, he began to study at New York University Law School, graduating in 1915. He became a lawyer the following year but only worked for a short time in law, before he began to make his way as a freelance writer and editor. In 1930 he married Marie Syrkin, a high school teacher. From the 1940s to 1966, Marie taught at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, and they lived apart during the week, coming together at weekends and holidays. After she retired, they continued to live in New York where Reznikoff had been all along. For a time in the 1930s, Reznikoff was employed as the editor of Corpus Jurus, a legal reference book. 

As we will see, journalism and the law were to play an important role in the development of Reznikoff’s distinctive practice as a poet. In a sense the training he received in these fields combined with his rich Jewish heritage and his identification with New York city as his domain, provided both the tenor of his voice as a poet and the subject matter to which he returned again and again. In some ways, Reznikoff can be seen as a poet located in a particular place, whose daily encounters with the people, sights and sounds of the city, formed the material out of which his poems were built. Nevertheless, his work is anything but provincial. His experience as a Jewish observer, combined with an almost forensic eye for detail and factual clarity, led him to produce work that is both carefully constructed, humane and powerful.

Between 1918 and 1941, Reznikoff published a number of books of poetry, beginning with one titled, Rhythms, in 1918, and various plays that were included in a volume published in 1927. After a collection titled, Going To and Fro and Walking Up and Down, published in 1941, there was a long gap until his next book came out in 1962. Its title is, By the Waters of Manhatten: Selected Verse – and I still have the copy I bought back in the early 1970s with its grainy black and white cover photograph of a boat on an urban waterway in front of traffic on a city street in the dark shadows cast by almost invisible high-rise buildings. This book, and another I came across in 1979, titled, By the Well of Living & Seeing, were my only contacts with Charles Reznikoff, until I bought, in the late 1990s, The Complete Poems, edited by Seamus Cooney, which included all his poetry from 1918-1975. 

The titles of these books seemed to me to themselves enshrine great significance, beauty and depth. And I found in his poetry a great reverence for the small events of daily life as well as a deep sense of the sweep of human history and the relationship between an individual and their community and culture. Reznikoff’s world was urban rather than rural, and celebrated in cool, unemotional, language his observance of the ups and downs, the joys and despairs, of daily life. 

Before I explore a selection of Reznikoff’s work, I want to say something about two movements or trends in early 20th century poetry that are associated with him: ‘imagism’ - that became very influential at the time Reznikoff was born; and ‘objectivism’ – a termed used by Louis Zukofsky in an essay he wrote for Poetry magazine in February 1931. This issue of the influential American publication included work by Reznikoff, the Northumbrian poet, Basil Bunting, and the Americans George Oppen and William Carlos Williams. 

So, first, ‘imagism,’ associated with the American poet, Ezra Pound, who first used the term in 1912 in relation to a poem by Hilda Doolittle, and when he published the work of an English poet and philosopher, T.E. Hulme. In 1908, Hulme had written in an essay that the language of poetry is a ‘visual concrete one … Images in verse are not mere decoration, but the very essence.’ (Poets.org 2017) Hulme was reacting against the subjectivism, verbosity and abstraction, as he saw it, of Romantic and Victorian poetry. In an article for Poetry magazine in March 1913, Pound defined the ‘image’ as ‘that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time.’ A brief statement in the same publication, by the English poet, F.S. Flint, added that the ‘Imagistes,’ (he used the French form of the word) aimed to ‘use absolutely no word that did not contribute to the presentation.’ (Jones 2001: 129-130) Pound added a few ‘don’ts’ to the language Imagists were intent on using, including: ‘Use no superfluous word, no adjective, which does not reveal something.’ And, the more enigmatic, ‘go in fear of abstractions.’ (ibid: 131) In other words focus on the concrete, be as direct as possible and be as brief as you can. 

While Pound makes reference to the Greeks as an influence on the development of the Imagist aesthetic – ‘… no metaphors that won’t permit examination. It’s straight talk, straight as the Greek…’ (ibid: 17) – we can also see how other interests of that time in Japanese ‘haiku’ and Chinese poetry, offered examples of the ways in which concise images could form the structural basis of poetic language. Certainly, a study of Chinese classical poetic forms, and how to translate them into contemporary English, or American English, became central to Ezra Pound’s development as a poet over the next few years. Two of Pound’s poems, included in the 1914 anthology titled, Des Imagistes, are notable for their brevity, and one as possibly being Pound’s reworking of a Chinese poem.  The first, titled simply, Ts’ai Chi’h, goes like this: 

The petals fall in the fountain,

               the orange-coloured rose-leaves,

Their ochre clings to the stone.

The second is titled, In a Station of the Metro. It is even shorter:

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.

As well as an interest in Chinese and Japanese culture, one can also pick up the influence of the late nineteenth century French Symbolist poets, such as, Charles Baudelaire, Stephane Mallarme and Paul Verlaine. Here’s a stanza from Verlaine’s poem, Autumn Song:

The long sobs of

The violins

   Of autumn

Lay waste my heart

With monotones

   Of boredom.

(Rothenberg & Robinson 2009 : 752)

With it’s typical downbeat, sombre, yet knowingly mannered imagery, the connection with Imagism is very apparent. 

In addition to the Ezra Pound poems just quoted, the first Imagist anthology also included poems by Richard Aldington, Hilda Doolittle (usually known as H.D.) Amy Lowell, F.S. Flint, William Carlos Williams and others. Here is the first stanza of one by Amy Lowell, titled, In a Garden:

Gushing from the mouths of stone men

To spread at ease under the sky

In granite-lipped basins,

Where iris dabble their feet

And rustle to a passing wind,

The water fills the garden with its rushing,

In the midst of the quiet of close-lipped lawns.

(Jones 2001: 87) 

Lowell allows the single image of the water gushing from a sculpture of ‘stone men’ in ‘granite-lipped basins’ to fill and energise the whole poem – contrasting the flow of water with the ‘quiet of close-lipped lawns.’ This is very evocative and leads to a conclusion in which Lowell imagines her lover in the swimming pool, ‘in your whiteness, bathing!’ 

I will end this brief homage to Imagism, with all of a poem by F.S. Flint – which also connects with Reznikoff’s later focus on the beauties of a city and its inhabitants. Flint’s poem is titled, simply, London:

London, my beautiful,

it is not the sunset

nor the pale green sky

shimmering through the curtain

of the silver birch,

not the quietness;

it is not the hopping

of birds

upon the lawn,

nor the darkness

stealing over all things

that moves me.

But as the moon creeps slowly

over the tree-tops

among the stars,

I think of her

and the glow her passing

sheds on men.

London, my beautiful,

I will climb

into the branches

to the moonlit tree-tops,

that my blood may be cooled

by the wind.

(Jones 2001: 75)

Flint pays homage to the beauty of the city and to the cool light of the moon as it falls on the city’s multitude of inhabitants. Though he lived until 1960, Flint produced little poetry later in life and his last volume of verse in 1920, included work that reverted to a more Romantic sensibility. 

I now want to turn to another ‘ism’ associated with Reznikoff, ‘Objectivism.’ The term was coined in 1931 by an American poet, Louis Zukofsky, (born in 1904) who edited the February edition of Poetry magazine in that year. The word, ‘Objectivist,’ was used by Zukofsky to link the approaches taken by many of the poets he included in this issue. These included: George Oppen, Carl Rakosi, the English poet, Basil Bunting, William Carlos Williams, Charles Reznikoff and Zukofsky himself. Zukofsky, like Reznikoff, was the son of Jewish immigrants, in his case from Lithuania. He grew up in New York City in a Yiddish-speaking family and seems to have been interested in poetry from an early age, deciding, while at school, that the only contemporary poet who mattered was Ezra Pound. Quite a realisation at so young an age. In 1929 he surprised Pound by sending him an analysis of Pound’s poem, The Cantos, the first study of the poem, which is when Pound urged Harriet Monroe, the wealthy founder of Poetry magazine to invite Zukofsky as a guest editor. The issue was called, ‘Objectivists 1931’ – and was followed in 1932 by the publication of, An ‘Objectivists’ Anthology, edited by Zukofsky. A little later, another American poet, Lorine Niedecker, became a lifelong friend of Zukofsky and was very closely associated with the ‘movement.’ 

The Objectivists had no explicit ethos, let alone a manifesto, but shared a few characteristic approaches to poetry. Zukofsky summed up the reason for using the term by suggesting that two principles underpinned this new modern approach to the making of poems: ‘sincerity’ and ‘objectification’ – brought together in the ‘energies of words.’ (O’Leary 2008) This is a rather vague definition of Objectivism and even now there is much debate as to what Zukofsky had in mind. But he did make reference to the way the word ‘objective’ was used in optics to refer to ‘bringing the rays [of light] from an object to a focus.’ (ibid) Zukofsky seems to imply that a measure of a poem is the degree to which its meaning is evoked in the poem as an object – as a construction made up of an image or images rendered in words. A poem is an object that brings experience into focus in a clear, well-constructed, form – ‘objectively perfect.’ (ibid) There is also the notion of ‘being objective’ - trying to maintain a neutral stance in relation to what is being presented in the poem. 

Charles Reznikoff, in a pamphlet published in 1977 by Black Sparrow Press, had this to say: ‘With respect to the treatment of subject matter in verse and the use of the term “objectivist” and “objectivism,” let me again refer to the rules with respect to testimony in a court of law. Evidence to be admissible in a trial cannot state conclusions of fact: it must state the facts themselves. For example, a witness in an action for negligence cannot say: the man injured was negligent crossing the street. He must limit himself to a description of how the man crossed. . . . The conclusions of fact are for the jury and let us add, in our case, for the reader’ [to determine].’ (O’Leary 2008) 

As an example of what Zukofsky considered to be an excellent poem at this time, here is one by William Carlos Williams. Zukofsky said this was the best poem in his issue of the magazine. It is titled, The Botticellian Trees, and goes like this:

The alphabet of
 the trees
 
 is fading in the
 song of the leaves
 
 the crossing
 bars of the thin
 
 letters that spelled
 winter.

(ibid)

While the Objectivists, as an affiliation of poets, only lasted a short time, and seems not to have been very influential at the time, the Objectivist issue of Poetry magazine became something of a talisman for many later American poets. 

And so, after this lengthy digression let’s return to Charles Reznikoff, who, according to his fellow poet, George Oppen, was a very modest man – tending towards embarrassment when he was praised, while also being confident enough to disregard criticism. There’s an interesting video on YouTube of a talk given by Reznikoff in 1974 at the Poetry Center in San Francisco. (Reznikoff 1974) Reznikoff comes across as a lively character with a self-mocking sense of humour, a lot of wit and energy, combined with great warmth and intellectual substance. He begins his talk by reading two poems that encapsulate his approach as a poet. The first ends with these lines, likening a poem to ‘the tree in December / after the winds have stripped it / leaving only trunk and limbs / to ride and outlast / the winter’s blast.’ (Bernstein 1990: 33) This seems pretty close to Zukofsky’s notion of what an Objectivist poem should be. The second poem echoes the first, but instead of a tree in winter, we have the image of rug-making and how Reznikoff’s rugs have something of the directness and power of the ‘barbarian’ – spurning decoration and technical wizardry. It goes like this:

I have neither the time, nor the weaving skill, perhaps,

For the intricate medallions the Persians know;

My rugs are barbaric fire-worshipper’s:

how blue the waters flow,

how red the fiery sun,

how brilliant a green the grass is,

how blinding white the snow.

(Bernstein 1990: 33) 

This brings to my mind Reznikoff’s (1976: 20) fondness for this statement - attributed to the eleventh century Chinese poet, Wei T’ai: ‘Poetry presents the thing in order to convey the feeling. It should be precise about the thing and reticent about the feeling.’ (Graham 1965: epigraph) 

Reznikoff was an urban wanderer, a walker through the streets of his native city and from the beginning of his career as a poet he identified with the lonely walkers, the homeless and the poor. This poem from his first collection, Rhythms, self-published in 1918, gives an intimation of his life-long concern for the dispossessed, the émigré - the outsiders he encountered on his walks. It also signals his acknowledgement of the way poetry and language is washed away in the great scheme of things – words often inadequate in the face of life’s rough and tumble. He also has in mind the brevity of a human life and how precious it is. Note the simple rhyming lines that Reznikoff employs in this early work – a structure that quite quickly gives way to the ‘free verse’ he employed for most of his later work.

The stars are hidden,

the lights are out;

the tall black houses

are ranked about.

I beat my fists

on the stout doors, 

no answering steps

come down the floors.

I have walked until

I am faint and numb;

from one dark street

to another I come.

The comforting 

winds are still.

This is a chaos

through which I stumble,

till I reach the void

and down I tumble.

The stars will then

be out forever;

the fists unclenched,

the feet walk never,

and all I say

blown by the wind

away.

(Reznikoff 1996: 13)

In another poem from the same volume, he records the brutality of city life in the early decades of the twentieth century:

On Brooklyn Bridge I saw a man drop dead.

It meant no more than if he were a sparrow.

Above us rose Manhattan;

below, the river spread to meet sea and sky.

(Reznikoff 1996: 14)

Reznikoff notices so much. Even when surrounded by poverty and want, he catches glimpses of joy and kind acts that illuminate his days. As in this brief poem from the first collection:

Her kindliness is like the sun

toward dusk shining through a tree.

Her understanding is like the sun,

shining through mist on a width of sea.

(Reznikoff 1996: 16)

He notices the small happenings of daily life and there is always a sense of gratefulness at things he observes – the grace of beauty that lights up an otherwise ‘ordinary’ day – as in this poem, the last I will read from the first collection:

My work done, I lean on the window-sill,

watching the dripping trees.

The rain is over, the wet pavement shines.

From the bare twigs

rows of drops like shining buds are hanging.

(Reznikoff 1996: 17)

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Welcome back.

In 1920, the New York Poetry Book Shop, published a small Reznikoff collection, simply titled, Poems. It includes this fine observation – again, no elaboration, no unnecessary comment, but full of tenderness and understanding:

Showing a torn sleeve, with stiff and shaking fingers the old man

pulls off a bit of the baked apple, shiny with sugar,

eating with reverence food, the great comforter.

(Reznikoff 1996: 30) 

Some might see this as verging on the sentimental or mawkish, but, to me, the clarity and sparseness of the language frees it from sentimentality. This brief poem reminds me of poems written by the Japanese poets Issa or Ryokan – the latter having this to say:

Since I came to this hermitage

How many years have passed?

If I am tired, I stretch out my feet;

If a feel fine I go for a stroll in the mountains.

The ridicule or praise of worldly people means nothing.

Following my destiny, for this body I have received 

               from my parents

I have only thanks.

(Stevens 2006: 45)

There is an honesty to Reznikoff’s work that is, at times, both disarming and disturbing, as with this example from the same 1920 collection. The poet notes his own guilt at a failure to act and to come to the assistance of someone in need of help:

I walked in a street, head high,

when a thug began beating a passer-by.

I gave no help with blow or cry,

but hurried on glad it wasn’t I.

(Reznikoff 1996: 36) 

It is worth bearing in mind that this failure to act in a time of need, a failure of courage and resistance, becomes a prominent concern in Reznikoff’s later work as he records the evils of the Holocaust. 

By the time we get to Reznikoff’s next book of poetry, in 1941, with the lovely title, Going To and Fro and Walking Up and Down, we see him composing longer sequences of poems, exploring in more detail his Jewish heritage at a time when Jews felt great peril and anguish in Europe. The book was dedicated to the memory of his mother, Sarah, and can be read as both a memorial to her and as a statement of courage, resilience and even hope in the face of the horrors being committed against his people. In the first sequence, titled, A Short History of Israel, we find these lines, perhaps drawn from Jewish scripture, that warn of the trials to be faced and of the light that might lie at the end of the tunnel:

The water is bitter – you must learn to drink it;

the food you gather will not last –

wormy by morning;

you must gather it again.

Your enemies have forbidden you this peace –

this place;

you will find another –

a land of milk and honey,

of springs and fruit trees.

(Reznikoff 1996: second half, 17)

I now want to turn to a few examples from Reznikoff’s 1962 book, By the Waters of Manhattan. I will begin by reading part of a sequence titled, Autobiography: Hollywood – drawing on his experiences as, oddly, a Hollywood screenwriter, which he did for a year in the 1930s.

I like the streets of New York, where I was born,

better than these streets of palms.

No doubt, my father liked his village in Ukrainia

better than the streets of New York City;

and my grandfather the city and its synagogue,

where he once read aloud the holy books,

better than the village

in which he dickered in the market-place.

(Reznikoff 1962: 67)

And here’s the next poem in the same sequence:

I like this secret walking

in the fog;

unseen, unheard,

among the bushes

thick with drops;

the solid path invisible

….

and only the narrow present is alive.

(Reznikoff 1962: 68) 

The poet, Charles Bernstein, relates Reznikoff’s work to Hassidic Judaism and the ‘holiness of the everyday, the holiness of the most common acts,’ even ‘the most vulgar acts,’ and particularly, ‘the holiness of walking’ and ‘the holiness of looking.’ (Bernstein 1990: 36) This notion that all of existence is somehow holy and worthy of reverence and care, seems very applicable to Reznikoff’s work as a poet and witness and, incidentally, relates his work to Buddhist practices of mindful meditation and compassion.

In the same collection, there is a group of poems titled, Kaddish, the Jewish ritual for mourners. It includes this moving description of the final moments of his mother, whom Reznikoff had been visiting for some time as she lay ill in hospital. As with so much of his writing it is understated, stripped of ornament and emotional overload, and engages us through its plain words and clear imagery.

Head sunken, eyes closed,

face pallid,

the bruised lips parted;

breathing heavily,

as if you been climbing flights of stairs,

another flight of stairs –

and the heavy breathing

stopped.

The nurse came into the room silently

at the silence,

and felt your pulse,

and put your hand

beneath the covers,

and drew the covers to your chin,

and put a screen about your bed.

That was all:

you were dead.

(Reznikoff 1962: 78)

Nothing more needs to be said. His mother’s life ends and her son marks her passing with a simple description of the event as he witnesses it. And the witnessing is Reznikoff’s memorial to his mother. There is no ‘poetic’ embellishment, and he adds no account of his sense of loss and grief. And yet his grief is there, in the facts of what he experiences, as he lets go of her and pays homage to the natural order of things.

The sequence ends with this poem in which he speaks to his dead mother and gives us an insight into his poetic principles:

I know you do not mind

(if you mind at all)

that I do not pray for you

or burn a light

on the day of your death:

we do not need these trifles

between us –

prayers and words and lights.

(Reznikoff 1962: 79-80)

For Reznikoff, a poet has the power to leave some things unsaid and in being unsaid the gravity of the heart comes to the surface – the depth of his grief somehow revealed to us in his unshowy words and matter-of-factness of voice.          This respect for the natural flow of life and death and the place of one life in the great sweep of history, reminds me of the Chinese poet, Du Fu (Tu Fu), who, in his poem, Night in the House by the River, ponders on the march of time and the passing of centuries of lives. He notes that, ‘The great heroes and generals of old time / Are yellow dust forever now. / Such are the affairs of [humanity]. / Poetry and letters / Persist in silence and solitude.’ (Rexroth 1971: 29) It is sobering to reflect on the fact that both Reznikoff and Du Fu acknowledge that words, even when sculpted into highly respected and well-loved poetry, can never do justice to the pleasures and pains of life itself.  

I now want to turn to Reznikoff’s next book, By the Well of Living and Seeing, published in 1976. It is such a wonderful title, suggesting that to live and to see provide us with a deep well of nourishment – our seeing and paying attention a source of enrichment and an inexhaustible subject matter for poetry. This collection contains one of a number of controversial poems Reznikoff composed documenting the horrors of Nazi actions against the Jewish people in the Second World War. I am going to read an extract from a sequence titled, simply, Holocaust – probably written in 1973. Reznikoff notes that, ‘All that follows is based on a United States government publication, Trials of the Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunal, and the records of the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem.’ (Reznikoff 1976: 151)

It may be that Reznikoff’s writing is more prose than poetry in this extract, but the matter-of-fact reportage style conveys both the cold inhumanity and indifference of the speakers, the moral blindness of their actions and the deep shock and outrage of Reznikoff himself as he listens to their words. The menace, cruelty and horror of the words are deeply disturbing, and it is hard to believe that the human beings brought before the Nuremberg tribunals could have regarded such words and actions as being part of a normal day’s work under the Nazi regime. I am sorry for the pain you may well feel as you listen to them, but it seems vital to me, as it did to Reznikoff, that the ‘banality of evil’ displayed here is not forgotten.

We are the civilized –

Aryans;

and do not always kill those condemned to death

merely because they are Jews

as the less civilized might:

we use them to benefit science

as if they were rats or mice:

to find out the limits of human endurance

at the highest altitudes

for the good of the German airforce;

force them to stay in tanks of ice water

or naked outdoors for hours and hours

at temperatures below freezing;

….

for the good of the German navy;

….

or put poison in their food

or infect them with malaria, typhus, or other fevers –

all for the good of the German army.

(Reznikoff 1976: 151-152) 

It seems to me that Reznikoff’s, unadorned, clinical language, underscored by the scathing repeated lines, ‘all for the good of the German airforce … navy … [and] … army’ are powerfully damning, while at the same time, leaving us free to make our own judgement and to feel the echoes of these events reverberating in our own lives.

In the same 1976 book, Reznikoff has this brief poem about his grandfather. It reinforces the idea that Reznikoff saw himself as a witness not only on his own behalf, but also acting as a witness on behalf of his people, both Jewish and gentile – giving voice to the lives of the poor, the unsung and the outsiders of his native New York. It reads like this:

My grandfather, dead long before I was born,

died among strangers; and all the verse he wrote

was lost –

except for what

still speaks through me

as mine.

(Reznikoff 1976: 105)

Later, in By the Well of Living and Seeing, there is this poem that sums up Reznikoff’s belief in the blessedness of human life and of our beautiful if damaged world. It is titled, Epilogue:

Blessed

in the light of the sun and at the sight of the world

daily,

and in all the delights of the senses and the mind;

in my eyesight, blurred as it is,

and my knowledge, slight though it is,

and my life, brief though it was.

(1976: 109)

After Reznikoff’s death in January 1976 the editor of his collected works found a number of poems amongst the papers in Reznikoff’s study. Here are two on which to end this talk. The first is titled, City Lawn:

Young trees in a circle

with bright new leaves – 

swaying gently;

three stiff tulips

with petals still yellow;

a pigeon,

a sparrow,

and scraps of white paper.

(Reznikoff 1996: 207)

For Reznikoff, as a person and as a poet, there is something sacred about the act of paying attention and of being attentive. His poems convey to us his deep caring for the world and its inhabitants. The very last poem in the Complete Poems, published in 1996, gives us a lovely image of the poet’s spirit absorbing and transforming the difficulties of life into works of beauty – acts of witnessing the joy amongst the pain, the courage of ordinary people in the face of adversity, and the blessedness of life no matter how lowly or unremarkable it may seem. Here it is:

Whatever unfriendly stars and comets do,

whatever stormy heavens are unfurled,

my spirit be like fire in this, too,

that all the straws and rubbish of the world

only feed its flame.

(Reznikoff 1996: 211)

I hope this talk has whetted your appetite to read more of Reznikoff’s poetry and to learn more about the man himself. 

Thank you for listening and bye for now.

REFERENCES

Bernstein, Charles. 1990. Charles Bernstein on Charles Reznikoff. Online at: https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/bernstein/essays/reznikoffs-nearness-talk_tr-Alferi.pdf - accessed 9 March 2026.

Graham, A.C. ed & trans. 1965. Poems of the Late T’ang. London: Penguin.

Jones, Peter. 2001. Imagist Poetry. London: Penguin.

O’Leary, Peter. 2008. The Energies of Words. Article online at: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69068/the-energies-of-words - accessed 8 March 2026.

Poets.org. 2017. A Brief Guide to Imagism. Online at: https://poets.org/text/brief-guide-imagism - accessed 1 March 2026.

Rexroth, Kenneth. 1971. One Hundred Poems from the Chinese. New York: New Directions.

Reznikoff, Charles. 1962. By the Waters of Manhattan. New York: New Directions.

Reznikoff, Charles. 1974. My Platform as writer of Verse. Video online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jovlmdOgk58 – accessed 9 March 2026.

Reznikoff, Charles. 1976. By the Well of Living & Seeing: New & Selected Poems 1918-1973. Santa Barbara, USA: Black Sparrow Press.

Reznikoff, Charles. 1996. Poems 1918-1975: The Complete Poems of Charles Reznikoff. Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press.

Rothenberg, Jerome & Robinson, Jeffrey C. eds. 2009. Poems for the Millennium Volume Three: The University of California Book of Romantic and Postromantic Poetry. London: University of California Press.

Stevens, John, ed & trans. 2006.One Robe, One Bowl: The Zen Poetry of Ryokan. Boulder, Colorado: Weatherhill.