10-26-2013, 03:44 AM
Hmm... A little too rich for me, and with no obvious change of pace. Wiki has this, which I think contains much truth, especially on his provincial and ebullient nature.
''Beyond this, Pound's legacy is mixed. In 1922, the literary critic Edmund Wilson reviewed Pound's latest published volume of poetry, Poems 1918–21, and took the opportunity to provide an overview of his estimation of Pound as poet. In his essay on Pound, titled "Ezra Pound’s Patchwork", Wilson wrote:
Ezra Pound is really at heart a very boyish fellow and an incurable provincial. It is true that he was driven to Europe by a thirst for romance and color that he could scarcely have satisfied in America, but he took to Europe the simple faith and pure enthusiasm of his native Idaho. ... His sophistication is still juvenile, his ironies are still clumsy and obvious, he ridicules Americans in Europe not very much simpler than himself ...[109]
According to Wilson, the lines in Pound's poems stood isolated, with fragmentary wording contributing to poems that "do not hang together". Specifically citing Pound's first seven cantos, Wilson dubbed his writing "unsatisfactory". Wilson found the Cantos to be a disjointed compilation, its contents reflecting a too obvious reliance on the literary works of other authors whom Pound had read and an awkward use of Latin and Chinese translations as a device inserted among reminiscences of Pound's own life.[110]
Hugh Kenner wrote in 1951 that there was no great contemporary writer less read than Pound, though he added that there was also no one who could appeal more through "sheer beauty of language" to people who would rather talk about poets than read them.[111] ''
To give some balance, this appeared in the first issue of the Poetry Review,1912:
Poetry Review
Vol 1 No 1
January 1912
''CANZONI. By Ezra Pound. (Elkin Mathews. 3S. 6d.)
LET it be conceded at once, without cavil, that the authentic note of poetry sounds throughout this last book of Mr Ezra Pound’s. But is he the instrument, or is he the wind in the instrument? So much of his inspiration seems bookish, so much of his attraction lies in the vivid picturesqueness of his romance-besprinkled page. Look at his variegated record: In 1908 he published A Lume Spento, in the same year A Quinzaine for this Yule, then followed his Personae, his Exultations, largely reprints of the two preceding books, and now come his Canzoni. Then, if you run your eye over the pages of his books, you meet Latin and Mediaeval Latin, the “langue d’oc” and the “langue d’oil,” Dante’s Italian and modern Italian, Spanish, French, German, quaint (or queynt!) forgotten English; and, lastly, English. Yes, lastly English. So it is in this volume of Canzoni. If Mr Pound can find a foreign title to a poem, he will do so. Queer exotic hybridity! It would almost be true to say, also, that if Mr Pound can translate a poem, he will do so, rather than make one. He translates from Heine, Propertius, Dante, Pico della Mirandola, Joachim du Bellay, Leopardi; the bulk of the work in this book is not ostensibly translated, but it reads as though it were. Therefore, again, is Mr Pound the instrument, trumpeting the authentic note, or is he the wind in the instrument? You can state it both ways: either Mr Pound is the instrument, accredited with the keys, and attuned for the wind of the old songs and the old dreams, or his is the breath that, once more, gives to songs and dreams their ancient fullness. Whichever way you look at it, the note is the same, the true note of poetry, not as it is understood by the sixpenny dullness of weekly journalism, or in the literary dysentery of halfpenny newspapers - in neither can there be understanding, but as it is heard by the poet who takes the stars for his guide and the fairness of the earth to wife. The point to settle - though not here - is, has the singer of the Canzoni married . . . by proxy? Of course, criticism could not answer, crudely, yes or no. The question is much more complex than that.
Mr Pound will not have added much to his reputation with these Canzoni; but he will have strengthened it a great deal. Incidentally, he will have shown carpers at his form and rhythmical experiments that he, too, can, if he choose, write prettily in the regular metres. The important thing to say now, in this short review, is, that those who have the grace to and can spend money on modern poetry should buy this book. A wide experience of modern verse is behind that advice. ''
''Beyond this, Pound's legacy is mixed. In 1922, the literary critic Edmund Wilson reviewed Pound's latest published volume of poetry, Poems 1918–21, and took the opportunity to provide an overview of his estimation of Pound as poet. In his essay on Pound, titled "Ezra Pound’s Patchwork", Wilson wrote:
Ezra Pound is really at heart a very boyish fellow and an incurable provincial. It is true that he was driven to Europe by a thirst for romance and color that he could scarcely have satisfied in America, but he took to Europe the simple faith and pure enthusiasm of his native Idaho. ... His sophistication is still juvenile, his ironies are still clumsy and obvious, he ridicules Americans in Europe not very much simpler than himself ...[109]
According to Wilson, the lines in Pound's poems stood isolated, with fragmentary wording contributing to poems that "do not hang together". Specifically citing Pound's first seven cantos, Wilson dubbed his writing "unsatisfactory". Wilson found the Cantos to be a disjointed compilation, its contents reflecting a too obvious reliance on the literary works of other authors whom Pound had read and an awkward use of Latin and Chinese translations as a device inserted among reminiscences of Pound's own life.[110]
Hugh Kenner wrote in 1951 that there was no great contemporary writer less read than Pound, though he added that there was also no one who could appeal more through "sheer beauty of language" to people who would rather talk about poets than read them.[111] ''
To give some balance, this appeared in the first issue of the Poetry Review,1912:
Poetry Review
Vol 1 No 1
January 1912
''CANZONI. By Ezra Pound. (Elkin Mathews. 3S. 6d.)
LET it be conceded at once, without cavil, that the authentic note of poetry sounds throughout this last book of Mr Ezra Pound’s. But is he the instrument, or is he the wind in the instrument? So much of his inspiration seems bookish, so much of his attraction lies in the vivid picturesqueness of his romance-besprinkled page. Look at his variegated record: In 1908 he published A Lume Spento, in the same year A Quinzaine for this Yule, then followed his Personae, his Exultations, largely reprints of the two preceding books, and now come his Canzoni. Then, if you run your eye over the pages of his books, you meet Latin and Mediaeval Latin, the “langue d’oc” and the “langue d’oil,” Dante’s Italian and modern Italian, Spanish, French, German, quaint (or queynt!) forgotten English; and, lastly, English. Yes, lastly English. So it is in this volume of Canzoni. If Mr Pound can find a foreign title to a poem, he will do so. Queer exotic hybridity! It would almost be true to say, also, that if Mr Pound can translate a poem, he will do so, rather than make one. He translates from Heine, Propertius, Dante, Pico della Mirandola, Joachim du Bellay, Leopardi; the bulk of the work in this book is not ostensibly translated, but it reads as though it were. Therefore, again, is Mr Pound the instrument, trumpeting the authentic note, or is he the wind in the instrument? You can state it both ways: either Mr Pound is the instrument, accredited with the keys, and attuned for the wind of the old songs and the old dreams, or his is the breath that, once more, gives to songs and dreams their ancient fullness. Whichever way you look at it, the note is the same, the true note of poetry, not as it is understood by the sixpenny dullness of weekly journalism, or in the literary dysentery of halfpenny newspapers - in neither can there be understanding, but as it is heard by the poet who takes the stars for his guide and the fairness of the earth to wife. The point to settle - though not here - is, has the singer of the Canzoni married . . . by proxy? Of course, criticism could not answer, crudely, yes or no. The question is much more complex than that.
Mr Pound will not have added much to his reputation with these Canzoni; but he will have strengthened it a great deal. Incidentally, he will have shown carpers at his form and rhythmical experiments that he, too, can, if he choose, write prettily in the regular metres. The important thing to say now, in this short review, is, that those who have the grace to and can spend money on modern poetry should buy this book. A wide experience of modern verse is behind that advice. ''