Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry | Page 9

Noh are not so important as the Chinese poems?(certainly not so important for English); the attitude is less unusual to us; the work is not so solid, so firm. "Cathay" will, I believe, rank with the "Sea-Farer" in the future among Mr. Pound's original work; the Noh will rank among his translations. It is rather a dessert after "Cathay." There are, however,?passages which, as Pound has handled them, are different both from the Chinese and from anything existent in English. There is, for example, the fine speech of the old Kagekiyo, as he thinks of his youthful valour:
He thought, how easy this killing. He rushed with his?spearshaft gripped under his arm. He cried out, "I am?Kagekiyo of the Heike." He rushed on to take them. He?pierced through the helmet vizards of Miyanoya. Miyanoya fled twice, and again; and Kagekiyo cried: "You shall not escape me!" He leaped and wrenched off his helmet. "Eya!" The vizard broke and remained in his hand, and Miyanoya still fled afar, and afar, and he looked back crying in terror, "How terrible, how heavy your arm!" And Kagekiyo called at him, "How tough the shaft of your neck is!" And they both laughed out over the battle, and went off each his own way.
The "Times Literary Supplement" spoke of Mr. Pound's "mastery of beautiful diction" and his "cunningly rhythmically prose," in its review of the "Noh."
Even since "Lustra," Mr. Pound has moved again. This move is to the epic, of which three cantos appear in the American "Lustra" (they have already appeared in "Poetry"--Miss Monroe deserves great honour for her courage in printing an epic poem in this twentieth century--but the version in "Lustra" is revised and is improved by revision). We will leave it as a test: when anyone has studied Mr. Pound's poems in chronological order, and has mastered "Lustra" and "Cathay," he is prepared for the Cantos-- but not till then. If the reader then fails to like them, he has probably omitted some step in his progress, and had better go back and retrace the journey.
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF
BOOKS AND PARTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF?NOTABLE CRITICAL ARTICLES
BY EZRA POUND
POEMS
A LUME SPENTO (100 copies). Antonelli, Venice, June, 1908.
A QUINZAINE FOR THIS YULE.?First 100 printed by Pollock, London, December, 1908.
Second 100 published under Elkin Mathews' imprint, London, December, 1908.
PERSONAE. Mathews, London, Spring, 1909.
EXULTATIONS. Mathews, London, Autumn, 1909.
PROSE
THE SPIRIT OF ROMANCE. Dent, London, 1910.
POEMS
PROVEN?A (a selection of poems from "Personae" and?"Exultations" with new poems). Small Maynard, Boston, 1910.
CANZONI. Mathews, London, 1911.
THE SONNETS AND BALLATE OF GUIDO CAVALCANTI (translated).?Small Maynard, Boston, 1912.
A cheaper edition of the same, Swift and Co., London, 1912. The bulk of this edition destroyed by fire.
RIPOSTES. Swift, London, 1912.?(Note.--This book contains the first announcement of?Imagism, in the foreword to the poems of T. E. Hulme.)
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
"A FEW DON'TS BY AN IMAGISTE," in "Poetry," for March, 1913.
"CONTEMPORANIA" (poems), in "Poetry," April, 1913.
POEMS
PERSONAE, EXULTATIONS, CANZONI, RIPOSTES, published in two?volumes. Mathews, London, 1913.
FIRST OF THE NOTES ON JAMES JOYCE, "Egoist," January, 1914.
FIRST OF THE ARTICLES CONCERNING GAUDIER-BRZESKA, "Egoist," February, 1914.
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
"DES IMAGISTES," poems by several authors selected by Ezra?Pound, published as a number of "The Glebe," in New York. February, 1914.
Alfred Kreymborg was at this time editor of "The Glebe." The first arrangements for the anthology were made through the kind offices of John Cournos during the winter of 1912-13.
The English edition of this anthology published by The Poetry Book Shop. London, 1914.
ARTICLE ON WYNDHAM LEWIS, "Egoist," June 15, 1914.
CONTRIBUTIONS TO FIRST NUMBER OF "Blast," June 20, 1914.
"VORTICISM," an article in "The Fortnightly Review," September, 1914.
"GAUDIER-BRZESKA," an article in "The New Age," February 4, 1915.
CONTRIBUTIONS to second number of "Blast," 1915.
POEMS
CATHAY. Mathews, London, April, 1915. (Translations from the Chinese from the notes of Ernest Fenollosa.)
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
THE CATHOLIC ANTHOLOGY, edited by Ezra Pound. Mathews, London, December, 1915.
GAUDIER-BRZESKA, a memoir. John Lane, London and New York, 1916.
LUSTRA (poems) public edition, pp. 116. Mathews, London, 1916. 200 copies privately printed and numbered, pp. 124.
CERTAIN NOBLE PLAYS OF JAPAN. Cuala Press, Dundrum, Ireland, 1916. Translated by Ernest Fenollosa and Ezra Pound, with an introduction by William Butler Yeats.
NOH, or Accomplishment. A study of the Classical Stage of?Japan, including translations of fifteen plays, by Ernest Fenollosa and Ezra Pound. Macmillan, London, 1917. Knopf, New York, 1917.
PASSAGES FROM THE LETTERS OF JOHN BUTLER YEATS, selected by Ezra Pound, with brief editorial note. Cuala Press, 1917.
LUSTRA, with Earlier Poems, Knopf, New York, 1917. (This?collection of Mr. Pound's poems contains all that he now?thinks fit to republish.)
There is also a privately-printed edition of fifty copies, with a reproduction of a drawing of Ezra Pound by Henri?Gaudier-Brzeska (New York, 1917).
PAVANNES and DIVISIONS (Prose), in preparation. Knopf,?New York.
End of Project Gutenberg's Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry, by T.S. Eliot
? END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EZRA POUND: HIS METRIC AND POETRY ***
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