----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, February 22, 2000 10:09
AM
Subject: Re: "The Pound Era"
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 -----
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.