Reznikoff’s poems project an attitude which has uncanny significance for us today. Even those that are now 20 or 30 years old are peculiarly contemporary, being solely concerned with lucidity of vision. Naked of ornament, clean of illusion, they show us ’the iron scythe in the grass that stops for no flower.'
Introduction by C.P. Snow
By the Waters of Manhattan was published by New Directions in 1962. In the introduction C.P Snow writes, “[Reznikoff] is a deep, sarcastic, lonely writer. So far as I know, he is a writer quite on his own. His poems have moved me deeply and have engrossed me. They stand on their own…. I am anxious that people should read them.”
20th Century American writer of the Objectivist group
Reznikoff’s poems project an attitude which has uncanny significance for us today. Even those that are now 20 or 30 years old are peculiarly contemporary, being solely concerned with lucidity of vision. Naked of ornament, clean of illusion, they show us ’the iron scythe in the grass that stops for no flower.'
