Man Engendered: Effeminizing Louis Zukofsky

Year 2019, Volume: 13 Issue: 2, 123 - 140, 31.12.2019

Dror Abend-david

Abstract

This article considers the poetry of Louis Zukofsky, who writes from the margins of American society in the beginning of the twentieth century as he comes from a poor family of Jewish immigrants. The article applies a number of attributes that are associated with Women’s Poetry to Zukofsky’s work. The purpose of the article, however, is not to demonstrate that Zukofsky’s poetry is feminine, but that literary characteristics that are labeled feminine are common to writers of different backgrounds that are forced to create from the margins. Such writers are forced to merge the public and the personal and to deconstruct poetic norms, creating new forms of self-expression that will contain their different identities.

Keywords

Zukofsky, Gender, Jewish Culture, Identity, Social Hierarchy

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