“A man either is or is not a great poet, that is not within his control, it is the lightning from heaven, the “fire of the gods,” or whatever you chose to call it.
”
Pound is a tremendously important literary figure from theth century and he certainly was a great poet.
His own work helped to revolutionise poetry in the new age, He borrowed aspects from ancient Chinese and Japanese verse and infused it with own imagist principles to create a new style of poetry, a product of east meeting west, its poetry written in English but it depicts eastern content as well as mimicking its stylistic qualities.
Heres the poem he is best known for:
In a Station at the Metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough.
The first time I saw this poem was during the first year of my English degree.
I was baffled by it and came to the conclusion that because of its simplicity we cannot call it poetry.
Its easy to dismiss, and a few of Pounds contemporary critics even slammed into it terribly, However, I think its a really significant piece of writing, I was, of course, very wrong the first time I read it,
Pound valued word economy, If a word did not add to the poem then it was superfluous, an unnecessary extension, He cut this poem down and edited it it was originallylines long until he was left with the bare bones of the image he wanted to construct.
And thats the entire point of modernist poetry: the image, Its poetry without narrative or any sense of authorial direction, It captures a moment in time free from metaphor or allegory, It is simple, precise but nevertheless pertinent it is driven by aestheticism in its most clean and basic form.
Take from it what you will,
This edition collects Pounds earliest writing which is often his most experimental and also a little inconsistent.
In some of the poems he has not quite discovered his voice and he is still learning his craft.
His later pieces, and his Chinese collection Cathay, are amongst his best work along with The Cantos.
I will be reading and reviewing many of his works on here over the next year or so because Im writing on him for my masters dissertation.
Theres a lot to say about his work and how influential it was on other writers, More Pound for me! Wonderful, illuminating and at times tiring, early writings of Ezra Pound is full of information.
It is packed with meaning, from various schools and languages, I learned a lot but through the end, I was a bit exhausted from the essays, Nevertheless, it was definitely worthwhile, and everyone should read it at some point in their lives, I am homesick after mine own kind,
Oh I know that there are folk about me,
friendly faces,
But I am homesick after mine own kind.
Poetry is a sort of inspired mathematics, which gives us equations, not for abstract figures, triangles, squares, and the like, but for the human emotions.
If one has a mind which inclines to magic rather than science, one will prefer to speak of these equations as spells or incantations it sounds more arcane, mysterious, recondite.
Superb verse, the essays belie a certainty which made me recoil, Within the prose there is a dose as well of the overlap a la Slavoj: anecdotes are reused liberally in various pieces.
Recommended.
I neither like nor hate Pound, I appreciate his prose far more than I do his poetry, but I adore listening to him read his own work out loud.
If you haven't done this, please make your own day, Seriously, you're welcome.
As an English major, I somehow find ways to appreciate great works without actually enjoying them.
I think it's just been pounded into my brain after one too many lit classes,
Pound is just not for me, I find him to be arrogant and I always feel it showing through in his works, He has a beautiful way with words, but it never clicks for me, Personally, I would prefer Baudelaire over Pound any day, but hey, to each it's own, Pound is Pound you can't argue with the Alps, But reader beware: the introductory essay isn't memorable or informative, downright sin when treating the man who wrote that "Gloom and solemnity are entirely out of place in even the most rigorous study of an art originally intended to make glad the heart of man.
" Even worse, though, is that the Kindle edition I read has no tags or index there is no way to navigate this as an ebook besides flipping and searching.
NB: most of these poems are available for free from Gutenberg
Ezra Pound makes his Penguin Classics debut with this unique selection of his early poems and prose, edited with an introductory essay and notes by
Pound expert Ira Nadel.
The poetry includes such early masterpieces as “The Seafarer,” “Homage to Sextus Propertius,” “Hugh Selwyn Mauberley,” and the first eight of Pounds incomparable “Cantos.
” The prose includes a series of articles and critical pieces, with essays on Imagism, Vorticism, Joyce, and the wellknown “Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry.
”
First time in Penguin Classics
Includes generous selections of Pound's poetry, as well as an assortment of prose When reading his poetry, one can clearly tell that Ezra Pound was an intellect with a mastery of the classics and a passion for intertextuality in fact, a wealth of meaning for his poetry can be lost if the reader is not well versed in classic mythology themselves.
The Penguin classics edition offers an appendix that is both comprehensive and crucial for the modern reader, In addition to a number of poems, this book provides several of Pound's essays, including those pertaining to his promotion of Imagism.
Pound's fascination with Chinese poetry is also invigorating and stimulating to read, While it is a great compilation of poems and prose, Pound is not for the weak of heart.
i don't know, the good ones are really good, but the other ones are kind of like "what".
i probably didn't really understand them, if this book contained only the seafarer i probably would have given itorstars, ezra pound would be a redditor today he was very funny actually, and kinda insane too Dull and boring, Hard to understand. Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet, critic and intellectual who was a major figure of the Modernist movement in early to midth century poetry.
Pounds The Cantos contains music and bears a title that could be translated as The Songsalthough it never is.
Pounds ear was tuned to the motz et sons of troubadour poetry where, as musicologist John Stevens has noted, melody and poem existed in a state of the closest symbiosis, obeying the same laws and striving in their different media for the same sound ideal armonia.
In his essays, Pound wrote of rhythm as the hardest quality of a mans style to counterfeit, He challenged young poets to train their ear with translation work to learn how the choice of words and the Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet, critic and intellectual who was a major figure of the Modernist movement in early to midth century poetry.
Pound's The Cantos contains music and bears a title that could be translated as The Songsalthough it never is.
Pound's ear was tuned to the motz et sons of troubadour poetry where, as musicologist John Stevens has noted, "melody and poem existed in a state of the closest symbiosis, obeying the same laws and striving in their different media for the same sound ideal armonia.
"In his essays, Pound wrote of rhythm as "the hardest quality of a man's style to counterfeit, " He challenged young poets to train their ear with translation work to learn how the choice of words and the movement of the words combined.
But having translated texts fromdifferent languages into English, Pound found that translation did not always serve the poetry: "The grand bogies for young men who want really to learn strophe writing are Catullus and François Villon.
I personally have been reduced to setting them to music as I cannot translate them, " While he habitually wrote out verse rhythms as musical lines, Pound did not set his own poetry to music.
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