Customer Reviews (1)

What's in a name?
Neophytes take note: This is a page-for-page reprint of _The Letters of Ezra Pound, 1907-1941_, edited by D. D. Paige and published by Harcourt in 1950. Only the title has been changed. No need to consult the earlier, more comprehensive-sounding publication if this New Directions edition is readier to hand. ... Read more

Product Description
Ezra Pound was a major figure in the American and European literary world in the last century. He was also notoriously indicted for treason in a US court - but judged unfit to stand trial and incarcerated in a mental hospital for thirteen years. His anti-semitic and fascist views are well-known. But he also wrote a great deal of economics. He championed the Social Credit schemes of Major Douglas and proposed his own plans for restoring full employment in the middle of the Great Depression. His economic writings span nearly two decades and range from the nature of money to the evils of banks' monopoly over credit creation and the debilitating effects of Usury. His views on money are part of a rich tradition of monetary heterodoxy which argues that money and monetary authorities should be made to serve the people rather than be slaves to financial prudence. "The Route of All Evil" will restore Pound's relevance as a radical economist who has much to offer those who protest against the injustice of Third World Debt and the Washington Consensus, participants in the World Social Forum, and everyone interested in heterodox economics. ... Read more

Product Description
Ezra Pound's vocal support for Benito Mussolini and Italian fascism and his indictment, arrest, and imprisonment without trial have been a source of considerable puzzlement and embarrassment to an entire generation of poets and critics.In this book, Tim Redman draws from previously unexamined and unpublished archival material, to provide the first detailed and historical account of Pound's support for Italian fascism.Beginning with Pound's earliest political journalism for the socialist paper The New Age during the First World War, the book traces Pound's growing interest in the economic theories of C.H. Douglas and Silvio Gesell, his move to Italy, his meeting with Mussolini, and his increasing activity as an apologist and propagandist for the Italian fascist regime up to the time of his arrest. This fascinating account of Ezra Pound and Italian Fascism allows the reader to understand the causes and results of Pound's ideology and actions as well as the broader implications they have for the poetry and politics of this century. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Ezra Pound and Italian Fascism
The gist of the book is that "Pound wanted to be treated seriously as an economic and political thinker..."Redman tackles Pound's anti-semitism with great depth, his relationships with A.R. Orage, who edited The New Age, Gesell, Confucianism, C.H. Douglas(Social Credit) and others as well as his fan-like adoration of Mussolini and Fascism.The Cambridge Companion to Ezra Pound, edited by Ira Nadel, is a terrific introduction to Pound's complex poetry and politics and I recommend that you read it concurrently, especially if you are just beginning to acquaint yourself Ezra Pound's writings.

An Epoch-Making Book
This is an epoch-making book on Pound study, worth reading though published 10 years ago. It covers the poet's career from his London years through the arrest by partisans, from his politico-economic apprenticeship under A.R.Orage through his idiosyncratic intellectual Fascist involvement under Salo regime. The author shows convincingly that apologies by Pound for Italian Fascism was a result not from the flaws in his politico-economic thinking, let alone from his alleged insanity, but from the intellectual coherence in Pound's poetry and prose. The author's descriptive style is well balanced, at once critically scientific and sympathetic. Those who are interested in Pound and/or are taking a course on American poetry should read the book. You will certainly find the best explanation on Social Credit Theory, an ample analysis on _Jefferson and/or Mussolini_, and detailed information on Pound under Salo Republic, none of which you could never be given in any other Pound study. ... Read more

Product Description
Although James Laughlin (1914-1997) came from one of Pittsburgh's leading steel-making families, his passions were literary rather than industrial--he wanted to be a poet. Laughlin was a freshman at Harvard when he traveled to Rapallo, Italy, in 1933 to meet Ezra Pound (1885–1972), and he returned the following year to enroll in the poet's "Ezuversity." Pound dismissed Laughlin's poetic talents, advising the wealthy young man to make himself over into a publisher. Laughlin did just that, founding New Directions Press in 1936.

For much of the 1930s prior to World War II, Laughlin and Pound were friends, business associates, collaborators, student and teacher, and even at times son and surrogate father. But Laughlin's investment in Pound--and their friendship--was severely tested by Pound's wartime propaganda broadcasts for Italian state radio, his capture and abortive trial for treason, and his thirteen-year stay as a mental patient in St. Elizabeth's Hospital. Following this scandal and disgrace, the reading public no longer wanted to buy Pound's books, and the critical establishment dismissed him as a Fascist crank.

Laughlin and New Directions responded by marketing Pound in such a way as to convince consumers that the poet's importance needed to be judged solely on aesthetic grounds, and that his political beliefs were irrelevant to his accomplishments as a pioneering literary artist. With Pound's encouragement, and despite the poet's oft-expressed opposition to the mixture of commerce and art, Laughlin used such marketing tools as advertising, the cultivation of friendly critics, and the development of the trade paperback to enhance Pound's reputation.

Drawing on a wide range of sources--including interviews with Laughlin and other New Directions staffers and published materials from numerous literary archives--Gregory Barnhisel tells the story of the personal and professional relationship between one of the twentieth century's most controversial writers and his loyal and innovative American publisher--a relationship that eventually helped remake literary history and continues to shape our understanding of modernism itself. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Author and his publisher
This carefully researched book reveals the role of Ezra Pound's publisher in massaging his reputation, especially after World War II and the poet's disgrace of being confined in a mental institution.It is not entirely clear what specific qualities the publisher found in his poet.However, this book is a contribution to the now embattled Gutenberg Galaxy, the field of book culture, which is not always they way we simple readers would expect.I spent five years in publishing and found the account very believable. ... Read more

Product Description
This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

Product Description
This study investigates both the medieval Provencal troubadours particularly studied by Pound (after Dante), with reference both to their canons, the medieval biographies, and the 19th- and early-20th century use of these. These elucidate Pound's own use of Provencal materials in his poetry. Pound's transition to the ideogrammic method of "The Cantos" is demonstrated by a detailed reading of the first seven cantos. Finally, a discussion of The Pisan Cantos shows how Pound's early studies of Provencal techniques, and of its cult of emotions which linked it to pagan rites of renaissance, led to his recreation of the troubadour ethos of Amor as Poesis. ... Read more

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Eliot wrote in his introduction: "I hope that this volume will demonstrate that Pound's literary criticism is the most important contemporary criticism of its kind...perhaps the kind we can least afford to do without...the refreshment, the revitalization and `making new' of literature in our time." ... Read more

Product Description
This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishings Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the worlds literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

Product Description
The early poems spanning from A LUME SPENTO to THE SAN TROVASO NOTEBOOK.With annotations and notes. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Pound's finest verse
Pound's forays into the realm of the past, evinced by his interest in the Provencal trouvéres and the ancient Chinese and Japanese poets (whose works he rendered into English from notes made by the Sinologist Ernest Fenollosa) formed the basis of his early poetic enterprise. In terms of style, these early poems display a rarely paralleled originality, in combination with reserves of hermetic knowledge. This collection, which includes the translations (or paraphrases) of "Cathay", the impersonations of "Personae" and the renovations and improvisations of "Ripostes" and "Lustra" contains the best of Pound's poetry. It is not laden with the overlearnedness and pedantic eccentricity that make "The Cantos", (falsely called Pound's "masterpiece") such a brilliant failure, even by Pound's own admission. Moreover, they are possibly the most refreshing and original of Pound's works, displaying a remarkable novelty and a healthy erudition. Highly recommended.

Pound's first poems in edition
"The Collected Early Poems of Ezra Pound" is mostly a book forpeople who had already read Personae - the 1926 edition of Pound's standardcollection of his own minor poems - or are interested in the former careerof Pound. These will be pleased to find the famous poems (e.g."Redondillas") which they only knew by name and references, aswell as famous books here collected for the first time (especially 1908's"A Lume Spento," "Canzoni" (1911), andthe "Miscellaneous Poems," not previously collected). It's a fine editionwith useful notes and reproducctions of all the original title pages. ... Read more

Product Description
This set comprises 40 volumes covering nineteenth and twentieth century European and American authors. These volumes will be available as a complete set, mini boxed sets (by theme) or as individual volumes.
This second set compliments the first 68 volume set of Critical Heritage published by Routledge in October 1995. ... Read more