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Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

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	See, they return; ah, see the tentative
	     Movements, and the slow feet,
	     The trouble in the pace and the uncertain
	     Wavering!

	See, they return, one, and by one,
	With fear, as half-awakened;
	As if the snow should hesitate
	And murmur in the wind,
	               and half turn back;
	These were the "Wing'd-with-Awe,"
	               Inviolable.

	Gods of the wingèd shoe!
	With them the silver hounds,
	               sniffing the trace of air!

	[(from "The Return") Personae]
	Copyright (c) 1926, 1935, 1971 Ezra Pound

Biographical Information

Note: The chronological format below employs the table function (supported in HTML 3.0).

1885Ezra Weston Loomis Pound, born October 30 in Hailey, Idaho, son of Homer Loomis Pound ("Euripides Weight") and Isabel Weston Pound ("Hermione"); after eighteen months family moves to Pennsylvania.
1889Family moves to 166 Fernbrook Avenue, Wyncote, Philadelphia; they become members of the Calvary Presbyterian Church.
1898Three months tour of Europe (London, Brussels, Cologne, Paris, the Alps, Venice, Granada, Tangiers, etc.) with his great-aunt Frances "Frank" Wessels Weston ("Heeb").
1901-3 Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Meets Hilda Doolittle, William Carlos Williams (then a medical student).
1903-5 Studies at Hamilton College, Clinton, New York. Ph. B. (1905).
1906M.A., U of Pennsylvania.
1907Reads a little Confucius, July. Instructor in Romance Languages at Wabash College, Crawfordsville, Indiana, a small Presbyterian school, 1907-8.
1908Resigns instructorship at Wabash College. A lume spento, Venice, July. Settles in London, September (?).
1909Personae, London, April. Exultations, London, October. Meets W. B. Yeats, Ford Madox Hueffer (Ford). Joins the Second Poets' Club, comprising T. E. Hulme, F. S. Flint et al (Pound, in the "Prefatory Note" to "The Complete Poetical Works of T. E. Hulme" in Ripostes, refers to Les Imagistes as "the descendants" of this group).
1910Spirit of Romance, London, June.
1911Canzoni, London, July. Copies Arnaut Daniel's manuscript with musical notation before librarian Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti (later Pius XI) at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan, July. Shows it to Emil Levy in Freiburg. Shows Canzoni to Ford in Giessen, August, who rolls on the floor (this roll sends Pound back to his ''own proper effort, namely, toward using the living tongue"). Meets A. R. Orage, editor of the weekly New Age, who offers Pound a regular column.
1912Finds Andreas Divus of Justinopolis' Latin translation of the Odyssey in Paris. Walking tour in southern France, June-July. Harriet Monroe, Chicago, asks Pound to contribute to a new magazine Poetry, August. Ripostes, London, October.
1913"A Few Don'ts," March. Meets Henri Gaudier-Brzeska. Meets Mary Fenollosa, relict of Ernest Fenollosa, September, who later sends him Ernest's manuscripts on Chinese poetry and Japanese Noh plays, October-December (?). Stays with Yeats in Stone Cottage, Sussex, November-January (1914).
1914Marries Dorothy Shakespear, 20 April, at St Mary Abbots. Meets T. S. Eliot, about 22 September, at Pound's flat in Holland Place Chambers. Writes to Harriet Monroe (publisher of Poetry), '[Eliot] has sent in the best poem ["The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"] I have yet had or seen from an American,' 30 September. Sends 'Prufrock' to Poetry, October (it appears June 1915). Begins to work Fenollosa's translations into English poems (including 'The River Merchant's Wife'). Spends the winter of 1914-15 with Yeats at Coleman's Hatch.
1915Begins reading Confucius (prob. Pauthier's French translation of Chung Yung), January. "Imagism and England," February. "Provincia Deserta," March. Cathay, London, April. Mentions in a letter he has started work on The Cantos-to-be: "I am also at work on a cryselephantine poem of immeasurable length which will occupy me for the next four decades unless it becomes a bore," September. "Near Perigord," November.
1916Declares James Joyce is "by far the most significant writer of our decade" in Poetry, April. Gaudier-Brzeska, April. Lustra, London, September. Certain Noble Plays of Japan, Churchtown [Co. Dublin], September.
.....(This period under construction.)
1972Dies in Venice, November 1.

Principal sources for the biographical information: Humphrey Carpenter, A Serious Character (London: Faber and Faber, 1988); Eustace Mullins, This Difficult Individual, Ezra Pound (Hollywood: Angriff P, 1961); Noel Stock, The Life of Ezra Pound, An Expanded Edition (San Francisco: North Point P, 1982); John Tytell, Ezra Pound: The Solitary Volcano (London: Bloomsbury, 1987); James J. Wilhelm, The American Roots of Ezra Pound (New York: Garland, 1985).


Bibliography

Bibliography

  1. Bischoff, Volker. Ezra Pound Criticism 1905-1985: A Chronological Listing of Publications in English (Marburg, 1991)
  2. Gallup, Donald. Ezra Pound: A Bibliography (Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1983)
  3. Ricks, Beatrice. Ezra Pound: A Bibliography of Secondary Works (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow P, 1986)

Commentary, Guide

  1. Brooker, Peter. A Student's Guide to the Selected Poems of Ezra Pound (London: Faber and Faber, 1979)
  2. Cookson, William. A Guide to The Cantos of Ezra Pound (London: Croom Helm, 1985)
  3. Edwards, John Hamilton, and William W. Vasse, Annotated Index to the Cantos of Ezra Pound: Cantos I-LXXXIV (Berkeley: U of California P, 1957)
  4. Froula, Christine. A Guide to Ezra Pound's Selected Poems (New York: New Directions, 1983)
  5. Kearns, George. Guide to Ezra Pound's Selected Cantos (New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1980)
  6. Makin, Peter. Pound's Cantos (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1985)
  7. Miyake, Akiko, Sanehide Kodama and Nicholas Teele. A Guide to Ezra Pound and Ernest Fenollosa's Classic Noh Theatre of Japan (The National Poetry Foundation and The Ezra Pound Society of Japan, 1994)
  8. Ruthven, K. K. A Guide to Ezra Pound's Personae (1926) (Berkeley: U of California P, 1969)
  9. Terrell, Carroll F. A Companion to The Cantos of Ezra Pound, Volume 1 (Cantos 1-71) (Berkeley: U of California P, 1980)
  10. ---. A Companion to The Cantos of Ezra Pound, Volume 2 (Cantos 74-117) (Berkeley: U of California P, 1984)

Concordance

  1. Dilligan, Robert J., James W. Parins, and Todd K. Bender. A Concordance to Ezra Pound's Cantos (New York: Garland, 1981)
  2. Lane, Gary. A Concordance to Personae: The Shorter Poems of Ezra Pound (New York: Haskell House, 1972)

Collection of Criticism

  1. Bell, Ian F. A., ed. Ezra Pound: Tactics for Reading (London: Vision P, 1982)

    Includes:

    • Brooker, Peter. "The Lesson of Ezra Pound: An Essay in Poetry, Literary Ideology and Politics." 9-49.
    • Murray, David. "Pound-signs: Money and Representation in Ezra Pound." 50-78.
    • Kayman, Martin A. "A Model for Pound's Use of 'Science.'" 79-102.
    • Schneidau, H. N. "Pound's Poetics of Loss." 103-120.
    • Mottram, Eric. "Pound, Merleau-Ponty and the Phenomenology of Poetry." 121-147.
    • Bell, Ian F. A. "'Speaking inFigures': The Mechanical Thomas Jefferson of Canto 31." 148-186.
    • Riddel, Joseph N. "'Neo-Nietzschean Clatter'--Speculation and/on Pound's Poetic Image." 187-220.
    • Godden, Richard. "Icons, Etymologies, Origins and Monkey Puzzles in the Languages of Upward and Fenollosa." 221-244.
  2. Bloom, Harold, ed. Ezra Pound (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987)

    Includes:

    • Kenner, Hugh. "Mauberley." 9-23.
    • Hesse, Eva. "The End of The Cantos." 25-40.
    • Pearlman, Daniel D. "The Barb of Time." 41-55.
    • Martz, Louis L. "Pound's Early Poems." 57-73.
    • Nänny, Max. "Context, Contiguity and Contact in Ezra Pound's Personae." 75-85.
    • Pearlman, Daniel D. "Ezra Pound: America's Wandering Jew." 87-104.
    • Robinson, Fred C. "'The Might of the North': Pound's Anglo-Saxon Studies and 'The Seafarer." 105-126.
    • Davie, Donald. "Res and Verba in Rock-Drill and After." 127-139.
    • Froula, Christine. "The Pound Error: The Limits of Authority in the Modern Epic." 141-160.
    • Bernstein, Michael Andr
    • Nãnny, Max. "Context, Contiguity and Contact in Ezra Pound's Personae." 75-85.
    • Pearlman, Daniel D. "Ezra Pound: America's Wandering Jew." 87-104.
    • Robinson, Fred C. "'The Might of the North': Pound's Anglo-Saxon Studies and 'The Seafarer." 105-26.
    • Davie, Donald. "Res and Verba in Rock-Drill and After." 127-39.
    • Bernstein, Michael AndrE "Image, Word, and Sign: The Visual Arts as Evidence in Ezra Pound's Cantos." 161-76.
    • Lindberg, Kathryne V. "Rhizomatic America." 177-98.
    • Kearns, George. "Reading Pound Writing Chinese: A Page from Rock-Drill." 199-208.
  3. Bornstein, George, ed. Ezra Pound among the Poets (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1985)
  4. Hesse, Eva, ed. New Approaches to Ezra Pound (Berkeley: U of California P, 1969)
  5. Juan, E. San, Jr., ed. Critics on Ezra Pound (Coral Gables: U of Miami P, 1972)
  6. Nadel, Ira B., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Ezra Pound (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999)
  7. Russell, Peter, ed. An Examination of Ezra Pound: a Collection of Essays (New York: Gordian P, 1973)
  8. Schulman, Grace, ed. Ezra Pound: a Collection of Criticism (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974)
  9. Smith, Marcel, and William A. Ulmer, eds. Ezra Pound: The Legacy of Kulchur (Tuscaloosa: The U of Alabama P, 1988)

Criticism

  1. Ackroyd, Peter. Ezra Pound and his World (London: Thames and Hudson, 1980)
  2. Bacigalupo, Massimo. The Forméd Trace: the Later Poetry of Ezra Pound (New York: Columbia UP, 1980)
  3. ---, ed. Ezra Pound: un poeta a Rapallo (Genova: Edizioni San Marco dei Giustiniani, 1985)
  4. Beach, Christopher. ABC of Influence: Ezra Pound and the Remaking of American Poetic Tradition (Berkeley: U of California P, 1992)
  5. Bell, Ian F. A. Critic as Scientist: the Modernist Poetics of Ezra Pound (London: Methuen, 1981)
  6. Bernstein, Michael. The Tale of the Tribe: Ezra Pound and the Modern Verse Epic (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1980)
  7. Bush, Ronald. The Genesis of Ezra Pound's Cantos (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1976)
  8. Chace, William M. The Political Identities of Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1973)
  9. Cheadle, Mary Paterson. Ezra Pound's Confucian Translations (Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1997)
  10. Childs, John Steven. Modernist Form: Pound's Style in the Early Cantos (Selinsgrove: Susquehanna UP, 1986)
  11. Davie, Donald. Ezra Pound: Poet as Sculptor (New York: Oxford UP, 1964)
  12. ---. Ezra Pound (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1975)
  13. ---. Trying to Explain (Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1979)
  14. Davis, Earle. Vision Fugitive: Ezra Pound and Economics (Lawrence: UP of Kansas, 1968)
  15. Dekker, George. Sailing after Knowledge: The Cantos of Ezra Pound (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963)
  16. Eastham, Scott. Paradise & Ezra Pound: the Poet as Shaman (Lanham: UP of America, 1983)
  17. Ellmann, Maud. The Poetics of Impersonality: T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound (Brighton: Harvester P, 1987)
  18. Emery, Clark. Ideas into Action: A Study of Pound's Cantos (Coral Gables: U of Miami P, 1958)
  19. Espey, John. Ezra Pound's Mauberley: a Study in Composition (Berkeley: U of California P, 1955)
  20. Flory, Wendy Stallard. Ezra Pound and The Cantos: A Record of Struggle (New Haven: Yale UP, 1980)
  21. ---. The American Ezra Pound (New Haven: Yale UP, 1989)
  22. Froula, Christine. To Write Paradise: Style and Error in Pound's Cantos (New Haven: Yale UP, 1984)
  23. Gage, John T. In the Arresting Eye: the Rhetoric of Imagism (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1981)
  24. Gelpi, Albert. A Coherent Splendor: the American Poetic Renaissance, 1910-1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987)
  25. Hamilton, Scott. Ezra Pound and the Symbolist Inheritance (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1992)
  26. Juhasz, Suzanne. Metaphor and the Poetry of Williams, Pound, and Stevens (Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 1974)
  27. Kearns, George. Ezra Pound: The Cantos (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989)
  28. Kenner, Hugh. The Poetry of Ezra Pound (1951; rpt. w/ new preface by the author, Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1985)
  29. ---. The Pound Era (London: Faber and Faber, 1972)
  30. Kuberski, Philip. A Calculus of Ezra Pound: Vocations of the American Sign (Gainesville: UP of Florida, 1992)
  31. Leary, Lewis. Motive and Method in The Cantos of Ezra Pound (New York: Columbia UP, 1954)
  32. Longenbach, James. Stone Cottage: Pound, Yeats and Modernism (New York: Oxford UP, 1988)
  33. McDougal, Stuart Y. Ezra Pound and the Troubadour Tradition (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1972)
  34. Makin, Peter. Provence and Pound (Berkeley: U of California P, 1978)
  35. Materer, Timothy. Vortex: Pound, Eliot, and Lewis (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1979)
  36. Miyake, Akiko. Ezra Pound and the Mysteries of Love: A Plan for The Cantos (Durham: Duke UP, 1991)
  37. Nagy, N. Christoph de. The Poetry of Ezra Pound: the Pre-Imagist Stage Second, revised ed. (Bern: Francke Verlag, 1968)
  38. Nänny, Max. Ezra Pound: Poetics for an Electric Age (Bern: Francke, 1973)
  39. Nassar, Eugene Paul. The Cantos of Ezra Pound: the Lyric Mode (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1975)
  40. Nolde, John J. Blossoms from the East: The China Cantos of Ezra Pound (Orono: The National Poetry Foundation, 1983)
  41. Pearlman, Daniel D. The Barb of Time: On the Unity of Ezra Pound's Cantos (New York: Oxford UP, 1969)
  42. Rachewiltz, Mary de. Ezra Pound, Father and Teacher: Discretions (New York: New Directions, 1975)
  43. Read, Forrest. '76 One World and The Cantos of Ezra Pound (Chapel Hill: The U of North Carolina P, 1981)
  44. Smith, Paul. Pound Revisited (London: Crrom Helm, 1983)
  45. Surette, Leon. A Light from Eleusis: A Study of Ezra Pound's Cantos (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1979)
  46. Sullivan, J. P. Ezra Pound and Sextus Propertius (London: Faber, 1964)
  47. Symons, Julian. Makers of the New: The Revolution in Literature 1912-1939 (New York: Random House, 1987)

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Last updated: 30 April 2004 (all links checked)

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Quid prodest hoc ad aeternitatem
Professor Eiichi Hishikawa
Faculty of Letters, Kobe University