Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

A selective list of literary criticism for modernist poet Ezra Pound, favoring signed articles by recognized scholars, articles published in reviewed sources, and web sites that adhere to the Modern Language Association Guidelines for Web Pages

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Literary criticism

Barton, Edwin J. "On The Ezra Pound/ Marshall McLuhan Correspondence." Barton explores the similarity in the writing styles of Pound and Marshall Mcluhan, in McLuhan Studies Journal, 1,1

Beach, Christopher. A complete book length critical study available online, ABC of Influence: Ezra Pound and the Remaking of American Poetic Tradition. (Univ. of California Press, 1992) from the California Digital Library. "In this first full-length study of Pound's influence on American poetry after World War II, Beach argues that Pound's experimental mode created a new tradition of poetic writing in America. Often neglected by academic critics and excluded from the "canon" of American poetic writing, Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, and later members of this experimental tradition have maintained the sense of an American avant garde in keeping with Pound's modernist experiments of the 1910s and 1920s."

Coyle, Michael, ed. Gettin' you offn th' groun, review of Ezra Pound and African-American Modernism, edited by Michael Coyle (National Poetry Foundation, 2001). The book "features a wide variety of contributions that trace the extended and diverse connections between the most controversial of canonical modernist writers and various aspects and representatives of African-American culture during the early part of the twentieth century." Reviewed in Twentieth Century Literature, Fall, 2004 by Steven Yao

Davie, Donald. "Ezra Pound Abandons the English" in Poetry Nation 4, 1975

Dasenbrock, Reed Way. "Paradiso ma non troppo: The Place of the Lyric Dante in the Late Cantos of Ezra Pound." Dasenbrock poses the question "if we have long recognized a disanalogy in terms of content and we now have begun to see a disanalogy in terms of form, how are we to explain the role Dante clearly plays in Pound's poem, particularly in the Late Cantos?" Comparative Literature, Wntr 2005

Goya, José Manuel Losada. "Poetic Image and Tradition in Western European Modernism: Pound, Lorca, Claudel," in CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture: A WWWeb Journal 1.2 (1999)

Hollenberg, Donna Krolik. "Art for whose sake? Reading Pound's reputation in Timothy Findley's Famous Last Words and The Trials of Ezra Pound." Hollenberg writes about a novel and play by writer Findley: "In these works about Ezra Pound, Timothy Findley engages the disturbing legacy of this modernist predecessor, whose fascist sympathies have not precluded praise by the academy." Journal of Canadian Studies, Wntr 1998/1999

Kenner, Hugh. Kenner's The Pound Era. Reviewed by Albert Gelpi, first page of review only, in American Literature, Vol. 44, No. 3 (Nov., 1972), pp. 502-504

Kronick, Joseph. Resembling Pound: mimesis, translation, ideology - Ezra Pound - Post-ing Modernism "In pursuing the issue of ideology in Pound by way of translation and mimesis, I wish to suggest that the appeal of interpreting ideology through a framework of cultural symbology lies, to a great extent, in the power of narrative." In Criticism, Spring, 1993

MacLow, Jackson. Some notes on his personal encounters with Pound and thoughts about Pound's anti-semitism, by poet Jackson MacLow, from his web site at the Electronic Poetry Center

Morgan, Frederick. "Journal Entry: Final Meeting with Ezra Pound" (June 18, 1969) in The Hudson Review, Autumn 2004

Morse, Jonathan. "The Startle Reflex: Some Episodes from the Lives of Ezra Pound’s Language." Readable, erudite, lengthy article from the always excellent Jacket Magazine, 34, Oct. 2007

Northcutt, William M. "What the Architecture Said: A Benjaminian Reading of Ezra Pound's Quest for the Paradiso," in EESE 9/1996

O'Driscoll, Michael. Ezra pound's Cantos: "A memorial to archivists and librarians." "To borrow from Foucault's terminology in The Order of Things, the heterotopia that is Ezra Pound's Cantos-that compendium of archival documents and textual fragments, that sum of countless gestures toward fictive and factive images-is intended to give way to a linguistic utopia in which its real world textual referents might somehow co-exist in the non-space of language." In Studies in the Literary Imagination, Spring 1999

Paul, Catherine E. "Italian fascist exhibitions and Ezra Pound's move to the imperial" contends "his writings of the later 1930s, such as Guide to Kulchur (1938), share a sense of purpose and method with the totalitarian propaganda efforts of Mussolini's cultural ministers." Twentieth Century Literature, Spring, 2005

Perloff, Marjorie. "What other 20th-century poet has had so ambitious a project? .... As these new volumes remind us [Sieburth's editions of Poems and Translations and The Cantos], Pound was one of the few Modernist poets with whom the 21st century must come to terms." Boston Review, April/May 2004

Perloff, Marjorie. On Pound's anti-semitism, from a discussion list posting

Pound, Omar and Robert Spoo, eds. A review of Ezra and Dorothy Pound, Letters in Captivity 1945-1946, (Oxford University Press, New York, 1999) reviewed by Marjorie Perloff, Electronic Poetry Center. Another review by Louis Dudek, Antigonish Review #123

Pykett, Lyn. The Culture of Modernism. Novel: A Forum on Fiction, Summer 2004

Rainey, Lawrence. From Ezra Pound and the Monument of Culture: Text, History, and the Malatesta Cantos (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1991). Rainey discusses the Malatesta Cantos, Cantos 8-11, and how through the figure of Sigismondo Malatesta Pound merged his concept of patronage with the emerging culture of Fascism

Romer, Stephen. On Pound's reputation, development, and the new Richard Sieburth edition of his poetry for Library of America. "Pound was never overly selective in what he laid before the public, very unlike the scrupulous Eliot. In this volume we have all of his early poems, or "stale cream puffs" as he dubbed them. But as we move through the volumes that succeed it, we witness, in fascinating close-up, the making of a poet." The Guardian, 7/3/04

Selby, Nick. "Fascist Language in The Adams Cantos of Ezra Pound." Selby contends that Cantos LXII to LXXII, devoted to a retelling of the life of John Quincy Adams, mark a turning for Pound towards an authoritarian discourse of history that propels him inexorably towards espousal of Mussolini's Fascism. Journal of American Studies of Turkey 2 (1995)

Sieburth, Richard, ed. Ezra Pound Poems and Translations (Library of America, 2003). Comprehensive critical edition of Pound's poetry, excepting the Cantos, publisher's page. Note on the text

Sieburth, Richard, ed. An extensive selection of Pound reading his works, at Pennsound (Univ. of Pennsylvania), site edited by Richard Sieburth, Sieburth interview

Smith, Alexander. "The literary consequences of the Peace: T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and the Treaty of Versailles." PhD dissertation, Columbia, 2006

Tapscott, Stephen. "In Praise of Bad Translation: Ezra Pound and the Cultural Work of Translation." Prof. Tapscott's, Modern Poetry, MIT Open CourseWare, Spring 2002

Wilson, Peter. An introduction to Ezra Pound, from the Literary Encyclopedia, 30 June 2002. On A Quinzaine for this Yule (1908); A Lume Spento (1908); Personae (1909); Exultations (1909); Canzoni (1911); Ripostes of Ezra Pound (1912); Cathay (1915)

Xie, Ming. "Elegy and Personae in Ezra Pound's Cathay." ELH, Vol. 60, No. 1 (Spring, 1993), pp. 261-281

Zhaoming Qian. Ezra "Pound's encounter with Wang Wei: toward the 'ideogrammic method' of the Cantos." Explores the previously neglected influence a Chinese poet of the T'ang dynasty, Wang Wei (699-759). Twentieth Century Literature, Fall, 1993

Zhaoming Qian. Review of The Modernist Response to Chinese Art (Univ. of Virginia Press, 2003). Reviewed in Twentieth Century Literature, Wntr, 2004 by Feng Lan

Introduction, lighter reading

Modern American Poetry Site on Ezra Pound re-prints excerpts of critical discussions of the following poems by Pound: A Pact, In a Station of the Metro, Portrait d'une Femme, The River-Merchant's Wife, Canto 1, Canto 9, Canto 45, Canto 81, Canto 116, Notes for CXVII

Issues and questions for teachers of Ezra Pound's poetry from Heath guides

"The Music of Ezra Pound," remarks on Pound's musical compositions, and audio excerpts from the operas and pieces for solo violin, from the performing group Other Minds conducted by Robert Hughes

Brief introduction to Ezra Pound from publisher Gale

Introduction to Ezra Pound by professor David Reynolds, in MSN's Encarta

Brief introduction to Ezra Pound from The Academy of American Poets

On Pound's poetry during his period at Washington's St. Elizabeth's. By Rod Jellema, in Beltway: A Poetry Quarterly

Web sites, libraries

Volume 16 of the journal The New Age, issues from November 5, 1914 to April 29, 1915. Introductory article and access to issues of the journal. Articles by Ezra Pound on Imagisme, Vorticism, W.B. Yeats and James Joyce. From The Modernist Journals Project, Brown University

A Yale Library exhibition documents the influence of Oriental aesthetics on American Modernists including Ezra Pound and others

Professor Joseph Conte's syllabus for English 633: Poetic Texture: The Smooth and the Striated in Postmodern Poetry, Fall 2001, includes a section on Ezra Pound

Catalog of the Pound manuscripts at the Univ. of Indiana

Article about Pound from the Ezra Pound Collection at the University of Idaho

A list of Pound's publications from the Electronic Poetry Center

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