Poet Charles Reznikoff Reading ‘Holocaust’

Prof. Abraham Ravett: CD of Poet Charles Reznikoff Reading ‘Holocaust’

Filmmaker and Hampshire College professor Abraham Ravett’s latest creative project — a CD of poet Charles Reznikoff reading Holocaust — took more than three decades to bring to completion.

Ravett made the audio recording in Reznikoff’s New York City apartment in December 1975, the same year that Black Sparrow Press published Holocaust and shortly before Reznikoff died.

Holocaust is largely based on translations from the Nuremberg and Eichmann trials. Read in the clear, aged voice of the great Objectivist poet, the recording captures the poem as an aesthetic object rather than feelings or thoughts, making the images it contains all the more haunting. Eighteen sections are entitled by opening testimony content, such as “One of the SS men…,” “The state is to get hold…” and “The bodies were thrown out quickly... .”

Listen to excerpts from Holocaust, read by poet Charles Reznikoff >>

read the rest of the story at hampshire.edu

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