SOURCE: "Origins of ¢' : Zukofsky's Materials for Collage," in ELH, Vol. 45, No. 1, Spring, 1978, pp. 152-76.

An American educator and critic, Ahearn is the author of Zukofsky's "A": An Introduction (1983). In the following essay, he explicates the origins of the collage method evident in "A."

In "A"-12 Zukofsky obligingly invites the reader to examine a paradigm for his own artistry. He has assembled a collage which he introduces as his "fetish for building." At the bottom of the collage stands "Duncan Phyfe's house, workshop and store—/ After an old engraving." To the right and above is "a postcard / Of Chardin's House of Cards." Left of the postcard floats "a doodling / On a scrap of white paper." Three elements then: engraving, postcard, and doodling, all discretely imposed on black construction paper.

Zukofsky produced no part of the collage, not even the doodling which consists of "four words / In small...