Readings In The Cantos

This volume offers clear readings of 28 Cantos from The Cantos of Ezra Pound in 23 essays written by eminent Poundians, with careful explanation of sources balanced with critical analysis of Pound’s project.

The first in a three-volume project of readings of individual sections from the central modernist long poem, 'The Cantos of Ezra Pound'. The project as a whole represents a landmark publication for modernist studies, bringing together a number of critical readings of 'The Cantos' by the world's leading Pound and modernist scholars.

Ezra Pound spent most of his life in Italy and wrote about it incessantly in his poetry. Only by following his footsteps, acquaintances and composition processes can we make sense of and enjoy his forbidding Cantos. This study provides for the first time an account of Pound’s Italian wanderings and of what they became in his work. After this study we will be able to read Pound as a guide to the places, people and books he loved, and we will share his the poet traveler’s joys and discoveries.

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.

This volume offers clear readings of 28 Cantos from The Cantos of Ezra Pound in 23 essays written by eminent Poundians, with careful explanation of sources balanced with critical analysis of Pound's project.

First published in 1967, this is a study which tackles the central problem of meaning, within Ezra Pound's The Cantos. It deals with the question of important critical issues, as well as of interpretation and understanding. Students of modern poetry will derive great benefit from this vigorous and lucid analysis of Pound's masterpiece. Noel Stock's finding is radical: that The Cantos is not a really a poem at all, but rather notes towards a poem. It is a collection of fragments of varying quality - some of extraordinary power and beauty - but in no sense formed into a work of art.

At last, a definitive, paperback edition of Ezra Pound's finest work.

This project offers readings of selected individual Cantos from The Cantos of Ezra Pound provided by renowned Poundians. It is designed to be useful for those new to Pound's epic modernist poem, with each "reading" providing a clear, detailed explanantion of Pound's often complicated poetics and fields of reference. The project will form the most complete resource on The Cantos since Carroll F. Terrell's A Companion to the Cantos of Ezra Pound, adding developed prose readings to the source-hunting of Terrell's project. As well as guiding the new reader, however, these essays also offer individual and often oirignal approaches to the poetry in question, providing a wealth of critical material for those already familiar with The Cantos and pursuing the works of Pound in more depth. The variety in approaches and reading methods displayed here offers numerous strategies for readers of Pound and for readers of modernism in general. This is the second volume of three, and describes 27 Cantos in 22 essays, focusing on work published between 1937 and 1948. The final volume will deal with Cantos published between 1956 and 1969, while the first volume addresses work published between 1917 and 1934.