Curtis Zahn — Poems
Curtis Zahn wrote poems that made bureaucratic language, advertising, suburban engineering, border tourism, and Cold War confidence stutter until their violence became visible. A poet, fiction writer, dramatist, journalist, painter, collagist, and radio producer, he could move from blunt documentary statement to wildly synthetic comedy in a few lines. His only dedicated poetry book, One Extraordinary A.M.: Some Poems, and the mixed collection The Plight of the Lesser Sawyer’s Cricket remain unavailable in complete scans, so this volume gathers the substantial work that can be verified: four poems from Poetry Los Angeles and the long border poem “Tijuana.” “Success Story” turns professional qualification into nonsense machinery, “Southern California as the State of the Union” makes the region a national diagnosis, and “Tijuana” exposes an economic border tourists cross more freely than residents can. Together they recover a sharp, restless Los Angeles satirist.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Bibliography
Zahn, Curtis. One Extraordinary A.M.: Some Poems. 1964.
———. American Contemporary. Introduction by Herbert Gold. New Directions and San Francisco Review, 1963.
———. The Reactivated Man. First produced 1965; published edition, 1984.
———. The Plight of the Lesser Sawyer's Cricket: Plays, Prose, and Poems. Capra Press, 1987.
———. “Later Than There Is No Never No,” “Homage to a Girl Named Cupcake,” “Success Story from an Economic Engineer,” and “Southern California as the State of the Union.” Poetry Los Angeles. Villiers Publications, 1958.
Novak, Estelle Gershgoren, editor. Poets of the Non-Existent City: Los Angeles in the McCarthy Era. University of New Mexico Press, 2002.
Goldstein, Laurence. Poetry Los Angeles: Reading the Essential Poems of the City. University of Michigan Press, 2014.
Boston University, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center. “Curtis Zahn” finding aid, including addenda for poetry, plays, and Pacificus Foundation material.
Broadway Play Publishing. “Curtis Zahn.” Biographical and theatrical catalog page.