Louis Zukofsky's life work is "A"—not the, mind you, but a, for as he said, "a case can be made out for the poet giving some of his life to the use of the words the and a…." The good life is one thing, then, and a life quite another…. [The] first section of the poem (there are 24 in all, which number echoes for me significantly the human measure of a day) was written in 1928, when the poet was 24 years old. The last writing is dated 1974 ("A" 23), so that one has the range of 46 years—without question a life's commitment, in all possible respects, to what does come and go, of a day, and what does stay put—as value, as measure, as possibility.

Unlike Pound's "Cantos" (whose time of composition might be seen as parallel), Zukofsky's work is grounded in a triad, a life lived with...