Ezra Pound: Poems and Translations (LOA #144)

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Author:

Pound, Ezra

Editor:

Sieburth, Richard

ISBN:

978-1-931082-41-9

Publication Date:

Oct 2003

Publisher:

Library of America, The

Book Format:

Hardback

List Price:

USD $45.00

Book Description:

Here in one volume is the biggest and best collection of Pound's poetry (excepting his long poem The Cantos) and translations ever assembled.

Ranging from the text of the handmade first collection Hilda's Book (a gift to the poet H.D.) to his late translations of Horace, and containing dozens of items previously unavailable, Poems and Translations reveals the diversity and richness of a body of work marked by daring invention and resonant music.

In such early volumes as Ripostes, Cathay, Lustra, and Hugh Selwyn Mauberley--as surely as in his later magisterial versions of The Confucian Odes and the Sophoclean dramas Women of Trachis and Elektra--Pound followed his own directive to "make it new," opening fresh formal pathways while exploring the most ancient traditions. Before, during, and after the controversies and catastrophes of his public career (culminating in his long residence in a Washington mental hospital while under indictment for treason), Pound remained capable of rare technical brilliance and indelible lyricism.

Here are the lush early lyrics, echoing Browning and the Troubadours; the chiseled free verse of such masterpieces as "The Return," "Near Perigord," and "Homage to Sextus Propertius"; the dazzling translations that led Eliot to call Pound "the inventor of Chinese poetry for our time." The Chinese verse translations are supplemented by Pound's versions of the Confucian prose texts--The Analects, The Great Digest, and The Unwobbling Pivot--which he saw as crucial to his literary aims. An extensive chronology offers guidance to Pound's tumultuous life, and detailed notes clarify the many recondite allusions.

LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

Book Details

Pages:	1363
Detailed Subjects:	Literary Criticism / Poetry
Physical Dimensions (W X L X H):	5.15 x 8.14 x 1.65 Inches
Book Weight:	1.906 Pounds

Author Biography

Pound, Ezra (Author)

Ezra Pound, 1885-1972 Ezra Weston Loomis Pound ("Ezra Pound"), along with T. S. Eliot, was one of the two main influences on British and U.S. poetry between the two world wars. Pound was born in a small, two-storey house in Hailey, Idaho Territory on October 30, 1885. Between 1897 and 1900 Pound attended Cheltenham Military Academy, sometimes as a boarder, where he specialized in Latin. Pound graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and went abroad to live in 1908.

The collection of his Letters, 1907--1941 revealed the great erudition of this most controversial expatriate poet. His first book, A Lume Spento, a small collection of poems, was published in Venice in 1908. With the publication of Personae in London in 1909, he became the leader of the imagists abroad.

Pound's writings have been subject to many foreign influences. First he imitated the troubadours; then he came under the influence of the Chinese and Japanese poets. The Cantos (1925--60), his major work, to which he added for many years, is a mixture of modern colloquial language and classical quotation. The Pisan Cantos (1948), written during his imprisonment in Italy, is more autobiographical.

Pound's prose, as well as his poetry, has been extremely influential. The Spirit of Romance (1910) is a revision of his studies of little-known romance writers. ABC of Reading (1934) is an exposition of his critical method. His critical writings include Literary Essays of Ezra Pound (1954), Instigations (1920), and Guide to Kulchur (1938). Pound was a linguist, whom Eliot called "the inventor of Chinese poetry for our time." His greatest translating achievements from Japanese, Chinese, Anglo-Saxon, Italian, Provencal, and French are collected in The Translations of Ezra Pound (1933). Among his other writings are Make It New: Essays; Jefferson and/or Mussolini, a discussion of American democracy and capitalism and fascism; and The Classic Noh Theatre of Japan, with Erne

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