Les stratégies négatives ou les intrusions poétiques de Charles Reznikoff

Abstract

Within the context of the high modernist period, this paper proposes an analysis of the makings of an aesthetic in the early poems of Charles Reznikoff. Introductory remarks stress the need to relocate Reznikoff 's poetics outside the confines of an imagist perspective-a major defining moment of modernism— and of the later objectivist perspective of the 1930s. Receptive to reappraisal in recent French criticism of poetry previously labelled impersonal or objective, the author subsequently underscores the contiguity of poetic craft and emotion. The poet is seen to encroah upon the outside world through strategies which paradoxically heighten a semblance of contact. These strategies are construed as intrusions in so far as they bring the poet to breach poetic boundaries. Actively cutting away at the purported limits of his craft, Reznikoff redefines the poet's relationship to his materials. In conclusion, it is examined how by paring down the poetic image, Reznikoff 's intrusions take him a step closer to a world which holds him at bay.