A poet's eye on behavior

 I love Charles Reznikoff’s short poems that reminded Paul Auster of photographs taken precisely — framed exactly at exactly the right moment.

But Reznikoff did other things. He wrote long poems based on legal records.

He also wrote poems about behavior. I’d call them moral poems, if a label is required. My favorite is about catching your wind after wrapping up the day job so you can work on you own stuff:

 

After I had worked all day at what I earn my living, 
I was tired. Now my own work has lost another day, 
I thought, but began slowly, 
and slowly my strength came back to me. 
Surely, the tide comes in twice a day.

 

I also love this one about silence:

 

I am afraid
because of the foolishness
I have spoken.
I must diet
on silence;
strengthen myself
with quiet.

 

If you can snag a copy of Reznikoff’s poems, you will find many wonders.

• Sources: Poems 1918-1975, The Complete Poems of Charles Reznikoff, edited by Seamus Cooney; Santa Rosa, Calif.: Black Sparrow Press, 1996. The quotations are from Vol. 1, p. 73 and Vol. 2, p. 28.

Paul Auster mentioned “I am afraid” in his essay “The Decisive Moment,” published in The Art of Hunger and Other Essays; London: Menard Press, 1982, and available at the Allen Ginsberg Project:

https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/reznikoff/decisivemoment.html