Synopses & Reviews
Poetic visionary Ezra Pound catalyzed American literature's modernist revolution. From the swirling center of poetic change he excited the powerful energies of Eliot, Joyce, and William Carlos Williams and championed the Imagism and Vorticism movements. This volume, the most comprehensive collection of his poetry and translations ever assembled, gathers all his verse except
The Cantos. In addition to the famous poems that transformed modern literature, it features dozens of rare and out-of-print pieces, such as the handmade first collection
Hilda's Book (1905-1907), late translations of Horace, rare sheet music translations, and works from a 1917 "lost" manuscript.
Pound's influential Cathay (1915), Lustra (1917), and Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920)-as surely as his later masterly Confucian odes and Sophoclean dramas-followed the poet's own directive to "make it new," opening fresh formal pathways into ancient traditions. Through these works and others representing more than 30 different volumes and dozens of pieces that Pound never collected, Poems and Translations reveals the breadth of his daring invention and resonant music: lyrics echoing the Troubadors and Browning, chiseled 1920s free verse, and dazzling translations that led Eliot to call Pound "the inventor of Chinese poetry for our time."
An extensive chronology offers guidance to Pound's tumultuous life. Detailed endnotes of unprecedented range and depth clarify Pound's fascinatingly recondite allusions.
About the Author
Richard Sieburth, editor, is professor of French and Comparative Literature at New York University, author of Instigations: Ezra Pound and Remy de Gourmont, and editor of Pound's Walking Tour in Southern France and Pisan Cantos.
Table of Contents
Hilda's book -- from A lume spento -- from The San Trovaso notebook -- A quinzaine for this yule : being selected from a Venetian sketch-book, "San Trovaso" -- from Personae (1909) -- from Exultations -- from The spirit of romance -- from Canzoni -- Poems withdrawn from Canzoni -- The sonnets and ballate of Guido Cavalcanti -- from Ripostes -- from Cathay : for the most part from the Chinese of Rihaku, from the notes of the late Ernest Fenollosa, and the decipherings of the Professors Mori and Ariga -- from Lustra -- "Noh", or, Accomplishment : a study of the classical stage of Japan / by Ernest Fenollosa and Ezra Pound -- from Arnaut Daniel -- from Pavannes and divisions -- from Quia pauper amavi -- Hugh Selwyn Mauberley / by E.P. -- from Umbra -- from Personµ (1926) -- from Guido Cavalcanti rime -- Alfred Venison's poems : social credit themes / by The poet of Titchfield Street -- from Guide to Kulchur -- from Personµ (enlarged version, 1949) -- Confucius : The great digest, & Unwobbling pivot -- The Confucian analects -- The classic anthology defined by Confucius -- Elektra : a play / by Ezra Pound and Rudd Fleming -- Sophokles : Women of Trachis / a version by Ezra Pound -- from Pavannes and divagations -- from Translations -- Uncollected poems and translations -- Chronology.