Synopses & Reviews
This newly revised and greatly expanded edition of Ezra Pound's
Selected Poems is intended to articulate Pound for the twenty-first century. Gone are many of the "stale creampuffs" (as Pound called them) of the 1949 edition. Instead, new emphasis has been laid on the interpenetration of original composition and translation within Pound's career. New features of this edition include the complete "Homage to Sextus Propertius" in its original lineation, early translations from Cavalcanti, Heine, and the troubadours, as well as late translations of Sophocles, and the Confucian Odes.
As a lifelong expatriate, Pound parceled out his work to a variety of journals in England, America, France, and Italy. This new edition takes account of this complex publishing history by giving the poems in the chronological order of their original magazine publication. We can observe Pound as he first emerges onto the literary scene in the pages of Ford Madox Ford's English Review and Harriet Monroe's Chicago-based Poetry, and then as an agent provocateur for the avant-garde Little Review, Blast, and The Dial.
Unlike all previous selections, this volume provides annotation to all the early poems as well as a running commentary on the later Cantos — indispensable to any reader wanting to follow Pound on his epic odyssey through ancient China, medieval Provence, the Italian Renaissance, the early American Republic, and the darkness of the twentieth century. The editor, Richard Sieburth, provides a chronology of Pound's life, a new preface, and an informative afterword, "Selecting Pound". Also included in the appendix are T. S. Eliot's and John Berryman's original introductions to Pound's Selected Poems.
Review
"Starred Review. At last we have what we've needed for more than half a century: a career-spanning selection gathering all of Pound's major verse, offering both the academic and pleasure reader more than enough Pound to get them going....This will become the standard Pound." Publishers Weekly
Review
"New Selected Poems and Translations, a volume that dwarfs its predecessor, goes light years towards providing an overview of the enormous breadth of Pound's work. It includes a hefty selection of early pieces, the entirety of the two splendid long poems "Homage to Sextus Propertius" and "Hugh Selwyn Mauberley," and a mighty blast from the poet's masterwork The Cantos." Chris Faatz, Powells.com (Read the entire Powells.com review)
Synopsis
As a lifelong expatriate, Pound parceled out his work to a variety of journals in England, America, France, and Italy. This new edition takes account of this complex publishing history by giving the poems in the chronological order of their original magazine publication. We can observe Pound as he first emerges onto the literary scene in the pages of Ford Madox Ford sEnglish Review and Harriet Monroe s Chicago-based Poetry, and then as an agent provocateur for the avant-garde Little Review, Blast, and The Dial. Unlike all previous selections, this volume provides annotation to all the early poems as well as a running commentary on the later Cantos indispensable to any reader wanting to follow Pound on his epic odyssey through ancient China, medieval Provence, the Italian Renaissance, the early American Republic, and the darkness of the twentieth century. The editor, Richard Sieburth, provides a chronology of Pound s life, a new preface, and an informative afterword, Selecting Pound. Also included in the appendix are T. S. Eliot s and John Berryman s original introductions to Pound sSelected Poems. "
Synopsis
Ezra Pound has been called "the inventor of modern poetry in English." This is the essential collection of Ezra Pound's poetry — newly expanded and annotated with essays by Richard Sieburth, T. S. Eliot, and John Berryman.
Synopsis
The essential collection of Ezra Pound’s poetry—newly expanded and annotated with essays by Richard Sieburth, T. S. Eliot, and John Berryman.
About the Author
New Directions has been the primary publisher of Ezra Pound in the U.S. since the founding of the press when James Laughlin published New Directions in Prose and Poetry 1936. That year Pound was fifty-one. In Laughlin's first letter to Pound, he wrote: "Expect, please, no fireworks. I am bourgeois-born (Pittsburgh); have never missed a meal. . . . But full of 'noble caring' for something as inconceivable as the future of decent letters in the US." Little did Pound know that into the twenty-first century the fireworks would keep exploding as readers continue to find his books relevant and meaningful.