Confucius To Cummings

Nearly a hundred poets are represented, a number of them in Pound's translations, with emphasis on the Greek, Latin, Chinese, Troubadour, Renaissance, and Elizabethan poets.

Similarly, these letters should provoke a reevaluation of Cummings. Critics have treated Cummings's political views as either strictly private matters or merely incidental to his art. The letters, however, show that Cummings's radically conservative political opinions are wholly consistent with his poetics, and raise the question of the relation between Cummings's political principles and his enthusiasm for particular forms (and particular stars) of mass entertainment. In addition to their political revelations, the letters are steeped in the literary climate - and literary gossip - of the times. Pound comments often and candidly on Cummings's poetry and prose; both Pound and Cummings send light verse to each other. And the poets exchange anecdotes about such figures as Henry James, Wyndham Lewis, T. S. Eliot, Edmund Grosse, Max Eastman, and Aldous Huxley, among other writers.

This selection from the Cantos was made by Ezra Pound himself in 1965. It is intended to "indicate main elements" in the long poem -- his personal epic -- with which he was engaged for more than fifty years. His choice includes, of course, a number of the Cantos most admired by critics and anthologists, such as Canto XIII ("Kung [Confucius] walked by the dynastic temple..."), Canto XLV ("With usura hath no man a house of good stone...") and the passage from The Pisan Cantos (LXXXI) beginning "What thou lovest well remains / the rest is dross," and so the book is an ideal introduction for newcomers to the great work. But it has, too, particular interest for the already initiated reader and the specialist, in its revelation, through Pound's own selection of "main elements," of the relative importance which he himself placed on various motifs as they figure in the architecture of the whole poem. Book jacket.

Cathay is a compilation of traditional Chinese poems translated into English by poet Ezra Pound. These fifteen poems are seen less as strict translations and more as new pieces in their own right.

Included here are all of Pound's concert reviews and statements; the biweekly columns written under the pen name William Atheling for The New Age in London; articles from other periodicals; the complete text of the 1924 landmark volume Antheil and the Treatise on Harmony; extracts from books and letters, and the poet's additional writings on the subject of music. The pieces are organized chronologically, with illuminating commentary, thorough footnotes, and an index. Three appendixes complete this comprehensive volume; an analysis of Pound's theories of "absolute rhythm" and "Great Bass;" a glossary of important musical personalities mentioned in the text and the composer George Antheil's 1924 appreciation, "Why a Poet Quit the Muses."

No literary figure of the past century is comparable to Ezra Pound in the scope and depth of his exchange with China. In this book 162 previously unpublished letters between Pound and nine Chinese intellectuals, accompanied by introductions and notes, make available for the first time the forgotten stories of Pound and his Chinese friends.

Provides bold insights into Pound's Fascism.

Once described by T. S. Eliot as "first and foremost, a teacher and campaigner," Ezra Pound has received no shortage of critical attention. Super Schoolmaster suggests that Pound still has quite a bit to teach readers in the twenty-first century, particularly amid increasing threats to the humanities and higher education. Robert Scholes and David Ben-Merre illuminate Pound's contradictory career of innovative poetics and reactionary politics by following his extensive thinking about teaching and learning within and beyond the academy. Given how scornful Pound could be of institutionalized schooling, the book's title may feel like a misnomer; however, Super Schoolmaster makes clear how wholeheartedly this modernist icon believed in the importance and vitality of learning. Pound's brief flirtation with becoming a professional academic ended early on, but his entire life's work can be seen as an immense pedagogical lesson, promoting a living, breathing culture tied to the very fabric of contemporary life. Not to ignore his critics, who have taught the necessity of reading against Pound, Scholes and Ben-Merre propose that to reread Pound now is to celebrate the joy of learning while always remaining mindful of the ultimate perils of his example.