Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry

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Title: Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry
Author: T.S. Eliot
Release Date: January, 2005 [EBook #7275]?[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]?[This file was first posted on April 6, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
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EZRA POUND
HIS METRIC AND POETRY
BOOKS BY EZRA POUND
PROVEN?A, being poems selected from Personae, Exultations, and Canzoniere. (Small, Maynard, Boston, 1910)
THE SPIRIT OF ROMANCE: An attempt to define somewhat the charm of the pre-renaissance literature of Latin-Europe. (Dent,?London, 1910; and Dutton, New York)
THE SONNETS AND BALLATE OF GUIDO CAVALCANTI. (Small, Maynard, Boston, 1912)
RIPOSTES. (Swift, London, 1912; and Mathews, London, 1913)
DES IMAGISTES: An anthology of the Imagists, Ezra Pound,?Aldington, Amy Lowell, Ford Maddox Hueffer, and others
GAUDIER-BRZESKA: A memoir. (John Lane, London and New York, 1916)
NOH: A study of the Classical Stage of Japan with Ernest?Fenollosa. (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1917; and Macmillan, London, 1917)
LUSTRA with Earlier Poems. (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1917)
PAVANNES AHD DIVISIONS. (Prose. In preparation: Alfred A. Knopf, New York)
EZRA POUND
HIS METRIC AND POETRY
I
"All talk on modern poetry, by people who know," wrote Mr. Carl Sandburg in Poetry, "ends with dragging in Ezra Pound?somewhere. He may be named only to be cursed as wanton and?mocker, poseur, trifler and vagrant. Or he may be classed as filling a niche today like that of Keats in a preceding epoch. The point is, he will be mentioned."
This is a simple statement of fact. But though Mr. Pound is well known, even having been the victim of interviews for Sunday papers, it does not follow that his work is thoroughly known. There are twenty people who have their opinion of him for every one who has read his writings with any care. Of those twenty, there will be some who are shocked, some who are ruffled, some who are irritated, and one or two whose sense of dignity is outraged. The twenty-first critic will probably be one who knows and admires some of the poems, but who either says: "Pound is primarily a scholar, a translator," or "Pound's early verse was beautiful; his later work shows nothing better than the itch for advertisement, a mischievous desire to be annoying, or a?childish desire to be original." There is a third type of?reader, rare enough, who has perceived Mr. Pound for some years, who has followed his career intelligently, and who recognizes its consistency.
This essay is not written for the first twenty critics of?literature, nor for that rare twenty-second who has just been mentioned, but for the admirer of a poem here or there, whose appreciation is capable of yielding him a larger return. If the reader is already at the stage where he can maintain at once the two propositions, "Pound is merely a scholar" and "Pound is merely a yellow journalist," or the other two propositions, "Pound is merely a technician" and "Pound is merely a prophet of chaos," then there is very little hope. But there are readers of poetry who have not yet reached this hypertrophy of the logical faculty; their attention might be arrested, not by an outburst of praise, but by a simple statement. The present essay aims merely at such a statement. It is not intended to be either a biographical or a critical study. It will not dilate upon?"beauties"; it is a summary account of ten years' work in?poetry. The citations from reviews will perhaps stimulate the reader to form his own opinion. We do not wish to form it for him. Nor shall we enter into other phases of Mr. Pound's?activity during this ten years; his writings and views on art and music; though these would take an important place in any comprehensive biography.
II
Pound's first book was published in Venice. Venice was a halting point after he had left America