I sense that this question may be unanswerable, but it occurs to me that in 'A Retrospect' in Literary Essays, Pound sets out his 'credo', suggesting again that he was deliberately, if facetiously, setting up a new 'Poetry-as-Religion' with himself as 'god', or at least demigod, a role he denounced later, in Canto CXVI; 'And I am not a demigod'. 
 
James.
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Everett Lee Lady 
  To: [log in to unmask] 
  Sent: Saturday, February 12, 2000 8:26 PM
  Subject: Re: "The Pound Era" (Michael Coyle)
 
 
  >From: "Michael Coyle" <[log in to unmask]>
  >To: <[log in to unmask]>
  >Subject: Re: "The Pound era": source?
  >Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2000 09:23:30 +0300
 
  >Vision*? Even here, however, I don't remember EP referring to "the Pound
  >Era." If you would kindly forward this post too to the list, perhaps Leon
  >Surette can put us straight. I'm pretty sure that Leon would know. In any
  >case, and one really would here want to know the context of that possible
  >iteration, it's not a phrase that Pound repeated. It's especially unlikely
  >that he could have offered that phrase seriously in 1922, when his
  >astonishment over Eliot's "The Waste Land" and Joyce's "Ulysses" brought
  >work on the *Cantos* to a temporary but still significant halt.
 
  In my opinion, it is precisely because of the publication of "The
  Wasteland" and "Ulysses" that E.P. might have momentarily and probably
  semi-facetiously have proclaimed a "Pound era."
 
  We are used to thinking of Pound as an arrogant megalomaniac, which in
  many ways he was, especially in the later part of his life.  Strangely
  enough though, although certainly not self-deprecatory, he seemed to be
  (as far as I can tell) almost modest in respect to his own poetry.  Most
  of his arrogant abuse was directed toward those who disagreed with him
  about the literary work of others (and, of course later, about politics
  and economics).
 
  I'm no Pound scholar, but as I see it if we look at Pound's body of
  work in 1922, we find that although he had published a number of books,
  most of them had been issued in extremely small editions.  Several of
  them, including PERSONAE (the original version) and CATHAY, had been
  published in editions about about 100 copies by Elkin Mathews,
  primarily for sale in his own bookstore.  Of course now we make a big
  deal of these books, because they are by Ezra Pound, but at the time,
  Ezra Pound as we know him did not exist.  The only thing of
  world-shaking significance, judged from within the context of its own
  time, was CATHAY.  HOMAGE TO SEXTUS PROPERTIUS was at the time an
  embarrassment, because Pound was perceived as having made a number of
  serious errors in translation (which in at least a few cases he almost
  certainly had).  Harriet Monroe had agreed to publish only four of
  the twelve poems from PROPERTIUS in POETRY because of the sexual
  explicitness (for that time) of the material.  HUGH SELWYN MAUBERLY
  (published by E.P.'s friend, the poet John Rodker) was admired for its
  technique by a few fellow poets, but at the time did not seem nearly as
  significant as Eliot's poetry, especially THE WASTELAND.  The few
  Cantos that had been published were not very successful and Pound
  worried that they were overly obscure and at this point was not at all
  certain that the project would be worth continuing.
 
  Of course looking at books is a little misleading, because Pound's poems
  gained most of their attention via publication in POETRY and THE LITTLE
  REVIEW.  Still, one expects that widespread success for a poet will be
  confirmed by success for his poetry in book form.
 
  By 1922, Pound had definitely made his mark on the literary world, not as
  a poet but as an impressario of poetry and serious literary work.  His
  critical articles were very well known and very influential.  And he had
  created Imagism, which people paid a lot of attention to (and took much
  more seriously than Pound himself originally had), according to the usual
  rule that artistic movements and schools attract more attention than
  individual artists.
 
  For a while, everything of any value that appeared in POETRY and THE
  LITTLE REVIEW passed through Pound's hands, and because of his
  friendship with Ford Madox Ford, he was also very influential within
  THE ENGLISH REVIEW.  He had played a decisive role in getting ULYSSES
  and Eliot's poetry published, as well as a great deal of other literary
  work.  Without his influence, H.D. would never have been seen as a
  serious poet, probably not even by herself, and it is arguable (or so
  it seems to me) that the same is true of Eliot.  He had even been
  influential in gaining recognition for Hemingway, although certainly
  Hemingway needed the help much less than many of the other writers E.P.
  championed.
 
  And finally, his true forte at the time seemed to be that of a poetry
  doctor (in the same way that certain writers in Hollywood are known as
  "script doctors").  He could have rightly claimed credit as co-author
  of THE WASTELAND (although it is the sort of thing he would never have
  done) and he also helped Eliot shape the poems in PRUFROCK into a form
  that made that volume successful (although in this case I think he
  didn't do any significant amount of editing on the individual poems).
 
  It seems clear that E.P. never seriously made a big deal of a "Pound
  Era," but when we look back on the literary history of the first two
  decades of the century and see the number of literary pies that Pound had
  his finger in, we can see that the term is not inappropriate.