Zukofsky & Goldfish

and this morning I come upon this:


"Children know we may see poetry with our ears: ABCD goldfish? MNO goldfish! OSMR goldfish. And that is our first delight in words that they hopscotch sequential noise - A poet, we say, has vision. Louis Zukofsky's vision came from excision of all but ears to the language itself, letter by letter: A. Like Nature, he was bent on ever more intricate goldfish. "Homer's Argos hearing/ Handel's Largo as/ The car goes". It is needless to state that this is first a telescope, before it is a poem. Behind the wheel, fiddling the syllables, the finest ears in the business is heading somewhere 100,000 years an hour (or so). Do you not hear them thunder?"

(Ronald Johnson)