Ezra Pound
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Ezra Pound
Alec Marsh
REAKTION BOOKS
For my students
Published by Reaktion Books Ltd
33 Great Sutton Street
London EC1V 0DX, UK
www.reaktionbooks.co.uk
First published 2011
Copyright Alec Marsh 2011
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Page references in the Photo Acknowledgements and
Index match the printed edition of this book.
Printed and bound in Great Britain
by CPI/Antony Rowe, Chippenham, Wiltshire
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Marsh, Alec, 1953
Ezra Pound. (Critical lives)
1. Pound, Ezra, 18851972.
2. Poets, American 20th century Biography.
I. Title II. Series
811.52-DC22
eISBN 9781861899682
Contents
Abbreviations
ABCR | ABC of Reading [1934] (New York: New Directions, 1960) |
The Cantos, 6th paperbound printing (New York: New Directions, 1996). This edition includes Pounds English translation of Canto LXXII. References are to Canto and page number thus: 84/557 |
CEPEP | Collected Early Poems of Ezra Pound, ed. Michael King (New York: New Directions, 1976) |
CON | Confucius (New York: New Directions. 1969) |
CWC | The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry, by Ernest Fenollosa, ed. Ezra Pound (San Francisco: City Lights, n.d.) |
EPEC | Ezra Pounds Economic Correspondence, 19331940, ed. Roxana Preda (Gainesville: Florida UP, 2007) |
EPCH | Ezra Pound: The Critical Heritage, ed. Eric Homberger (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972) |
EP/DS | Ezra Pound and Dorothy Shakespear: Their Letters, 19091914, ed. Omar Pound and Walton A. Litz (New York: New Directions, 1984) |
EPHP | Ezra Pound to his Parents: Letters 18951929, ed. Mary de Rachewiltz, A. David Moody and Joanna Moody (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010) |
EP/JL | Ezra Pound and James Laughlin: Selected Letters, ed. David Gordon (New York: W.W. Norton. 1994) |
EP/JQ | The Selected Letters of Ezra Pound and John Quinn, 19151924, ed. Timothy Materer (Durham, NC: Duke up, 1991) |
EP/MC | Ezra Pound and Margaret Cravens: A Tragic Friendship, 19101912, ed. Omar Pound and Robert Spoo (Durham, NC, Duke UP, 1988) |
EPVA | Ezra Pound and the Visual Arts, ed. Harriet Zinnes (New York: New Directions, 1980) |
GK | Guide to Kulchur [1938] (New York: New Directions, 1970) |
J/M | Jefferson and/or Mussolini [1935] (New York: Liveright, 1970) |
LE | Literary Essays (New York: New Directions, 1968) |
LIC | Ezra and Dorothy Pound: Letters in Captivity, 19451946, ed. Omar Pound and Robert Spoo (New York: Oxford UP, 1999) |
P | Personae: The Shorter Poems of Ezra Pound, revd edn ed. Lea Baecheler and A. Walton Litz (New York: New Directions, 1990) |
P&D | Pavannes & Divigations (New York: New Directions, 1958) |
P/LR | Pound / The Little Review: The Letters of Ezra Pound to Margaret Anderson The Little Review Correspondence, ed. Thomas L. Scott and Melvin J. Friedman (with Jackson R. Bryer) (New York: New Directions, 1988) |
SL | Selected Letters, 19091941, ed. D. D. Paige [1950] (London: Faber & Faber, 1971) |
SP | Selected Prose, 19091965, ed. William Cookson (London: Faber & Faber, 1973) |
SR | The Spirit of Romance [1910] (New York: New Directions, 1968) |
T | Translations (New York: New Directions, 1963) |
Prologue: Poetry and Politics
In a review essay titled Ezra Pounds New Cantos, published in 1949, the poet Richard Eberhart claims that an approach to the work as poetry is necessary and more rewarding... than reading the Cantos as political, economic or sociological manifestoes. Fifty years will remove the politics and leave the poetry (EPCH, p. 375). Those 50 years have now passed. To ones dismay, half a century seems to have removed the poetry and left the politics. Ask most people who Ezra Pound was and they will say a fascist and an anti-Semite.
But ask anyone who cares about poetry, especially someone who writes it, and you might learn that Pound was also a great poet. We often wish that artists would come down out of their ivory towers and get involved in the issues of the day. Yet, if Pound is a model for a politically engaged poet and a public intellectual, perhaps we should be careful what we wish for. Time has condemned his politics and with it has gone much of the poetry, not so much because it fails as poetry but because readers have been less willing to work their way into Pounds head; they are fearful of what they may find. There