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In 1917, having begun the long poem that would prove his life's work, Ezra Pound affirmed that the ultimate goal of scholarship is popularization. Few scholars subsequently have noticed this aim without finding it merely ironic or dismissing it as an early foible. Yet, as Michael Coyle demonstrates, Pound made similar assertions throughout his career, and his affirmation informs most of his work, including the Cantos.Coyle begins by examining T. S. Eliot's editorial work on the collection he called, over Pound's objections, Literary Essays of Ezra Pound. He then discusses a wide variety of discursive and generic combinations, explaining how Pound was led to attempt them and how those combinations affected his broadest ambitions. By establishing that literature itself is a historically privileged grouping of genres, Coyle makes possible a new understanding of how and why Pound mixed literary and nonliterary, popular and polite genres. ... 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 is a reproduction of a book published before 1923.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process.We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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"It gradually became clearer to me, as I studied his vast and complex work, that Pound was the mastermind of Modernism..." So argues William Pratt in his new critical study Ezra Pound and the Making of Modernism. In ten essays, several of which are based upon Pratt's presentations at Ezra Pound International Conferences, he locates Pound firmly at the center of a second great international Renaissance, the Modernism that through Pound grew from the French Realist and Symbolist literatures of the nineteenth century. Pratt's extensive knowledge of Pound's self-education, literary precursors, biography, and life's work shapes this chronological evaluation of Pound's tremendous influence on twentieth-century poetry. The text traces Modernism's origins back to Pound's launching of Imagism in 1912 and follows his impact on the developing movement from his early aesthetic declarations and his friendships with Modernism's pantheon including Yeats and Eliot - of whose "The Waste Land Pound" was the editor. Pratt also depicts Pound's evolution as a poet and the effects of residencies in France, Italy, and America on his writing.Critical discussions of Pound's artistic intentions as a translator, characteristic employment of multiple languages in his own poetry, and encyclopedic knowledge of global poetic traditions are expanded with reference to Pound's private letters and Pratt's reminiscences of meetings with the poet and his wife, Dorothy. Above all, this informed study argues that it is not merely for his internationalism, imagery, or metrical prowess that Pound was central to a poetic movement. Pound emerges as an innovator of historical import, an exceptionally gifted editor, and an influential educator of other poets: a true Father of Modernism. ... Read more

Product Description
Originally published in 1920.This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies.All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. ... Read more

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This is the only authorized biography of Ezra Pound, written by his friend and colleague, Eustace Mullins, who also wrote such revealing works as Secrets of the Federal Reserve. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

This Difficult Book
This review is about the book, "This Difficult Individual:Ezra Pound" by Eusatace Mullins.

Although this book was published in 1961, it has a 1940s style: tart, arcane, well-researched, gossipy but high-brow all the same, coupled with a strong impulse toward ethical puritanism.

The first third of the book is what you might expect from any study of great literary figures of the glorious past, particularly that Bohemian period of the Twenties and Thirties in Paris.There is an abundant crowd ofliterary luminaries that Ezra Pound meets and helps.There are literary quotations as well as quoted passages by other writers either about Ezra Pound or the time-period in which he and his friends lived. There is no literary analysis or explanation for any of Pound's poems or other works here or elsewhere in the book. The main names here, however, are William Butler Yeats, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, T.S. Eliot as well as Ford Maddox Ford and Wyndham Lewis.

The middle-third of the book is largely political, involving the story of how Ezra Pound felt compelled to speak out on the radio about the evils of war and how Americans ought to resist entering into World War II as well as critical remarks about President Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, thus causing the U.S. government suddenly to take the totalitarian decision to label Ezra Pound's talks as acts of treason.Ezra Pound spent six months in a concentration camp in Pisa, Italy and then -- illegally and unconstitutionally -- thirteen (13!) years in confinement at St. Elizabeth's Hospital for the Mentally Ill in Washington, D.C.

The last third of the book is a political and spiritual validation, vindication and defense of Ezra Pound'sideas about constitutional government, communication, and writing, although it is clear that after Ezra and Dorothy Pound leave St. Elizabeth's Hospital and leave the country to return to Italy, Pound never again communicates with the author (or anyone else in America, for that matter) and so has no knowledge of the last two decades of his life (with and without Dorothy Pound and Olga Rudge).

The author does a fine if unnecessary job of explaining just who Ezra Pound's (few)true friends were and who his (many) enemies were, naming names on both sides, without fully explaining why Eza Pound, who helped so many become good and famous poets, writers, artists, was not reciprocated with favor and help in return by them in his dire moment of need except to say that these saw this genius, this creator, as "this difficult man."Never once did the author think or even suggest that with each successive world war, civilization was growing more and more anti-intellectual, little capable of tolerating let alone understanding a man who loved learning, who could think, a man who kept growing intellectually even as he reached into his seventies, seeking the new intellectually in order to try to make the new stay new.

There are references in this work about Ezra Pound that I can't wait to read because they help me understand the world as well as Ezra Pound: the sociologist Pitrim Sorokin; the lawyer Sir Edward Coke; Louis Agassiz; Charles Callan, author of "Back Door to War" (1952) - about Roosevelt's knowing decision to get the U.S. into World War II; Brooks Adams' works; and "The Four Books" by James Legge, a Confucian work that helped Ezra Pound get through his 6-month experience in the concentration camp at Pisa.

As a single source to glean as much information as possible about Ezra Pound, I highly recommend this difficult book.It's a bit funny today to learn that the author went quite out of his way to prove and show that Ezra Pound was not a sexual decadent in any way -- only to admit, sheepishly and quietly, in the last pages of the book that, yes, Ezra Pound did have a mistress at one time, and, yes, the mistress gave birth to a daughter out of wedlock.This was a big part of the "ethical puritianism" I was referring to at the opening of this review.Nonetheless, this book shows magnanimously what a powerhouse of culture, taste, and intelligence was -- and is -- this incredibly gifted difficult man.I love listening to Vivaldi's music, and until now I had no idea that I had Ezra Pound to thank for the survival of such beautiful works in sound (although Olga Rudge may have been even more responsible for Vivaldi's survival if you trust Pound and Rudge's daughter's account in her memoir, "Discretions").

Ezra Pound
Eustace Mullins biography of and recollections of his friendship with the world reknowned poet Ezra Pound. Pound was also political prisoner who was arrested by the US government for making "pro-fascist" radio broadcasts during ww2. They knew the charges wouldn't stick in a court so they had him commited to a mental hospital where he was imprisoned for years.
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Customer Reviews (1)

just the greatest
The finest poetic anthology in the English language! Over the years I[just a common sort] have owned 4 copies, and worn out 3. Worth the priceif the price were doubled. ... Read more

Product Description
A loving and admiring companion for half a century to literary titan Ezra Pound, concert violinist Olga Rudge was the muse who inspired the poet to complete his epic poem, The Cantos, and the mother of his only daughter, Mary. Strong-minded and defiant of conventions, Rudge knew the best and worst of times with Pound. With him, she coped with the wrenching dislocations brought about by two catastrophic world wars and experienced modernism's radical transformation of the arts.In this enlightening biography, Anne Conover offers a full portrait of Olga Rudge (1895–1996), drawing for the first time on Rudge's extensive unpublished personal notebooks and correspondence. Conover explores Rudge's relationship with Pound, her influence on his life and career, and her perspective on many details of his controversial life, as well as her own musical career as a violinist and musicologist and a key figure in the revival of Vivaldi's music in the 1930s. In addition to mining documentary sources, the author interviewed Rudge and family members and friends. The result is a vivid account of a highly intelligent and talented woman and the controversial poet whose flame she tended to the end of her long life.The book quotes extensively from the Rudge–Pound letters--an almost daily correspondence that began in the 1920s and continued until Pound's death in 1972. These letters shed light on many aspects of Pound's disturbing personality; the complicated and delicate balance he maintained between the two most significant women in his life, Olga and his wife Dorothy, for fifty years; the birth of Olga and Ezra's daughter Mary de Rachewiltz; Pound's alleged anti-Semitism and Fascist sympathies; his wartime broadcasts over Rome radio and indictment for treason; and his twelve-year incarceration in St. Elizabeth's Hospital for the mentally ill. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Nearly incomprehensible in three or four languages
Anne Conover's biography of Olga Rudge and Ezra Pound is nearly incomprehensible in three or four languages.Conover's style seems to be to write a topic sentence, then devote the rest of the paragraph to an extended quote, in English, French, Italian or perhaps in Pound's eccentric prose, from her research.The reseach, indeed, is wonderful and, I'm sure, of great benefit to Pound scholars.

But should we not expect from a biographer the ability to string together a cogent narrative, to take the reader smoothly from point to point?In the early chapters, for example, Conover shoves the reader from the point where Pound and Rudge meet to Rudge expecting Pound's child in a few disjointed, ungainful leaps.The story is difficult to follow, with facts and (historical) figures introduced almost at random, like paint thrown carelessly on a canvas.

This reader, for one, was disappointed that such interesting and valuable research has been so badly mugged.Shame on Yale for publishing this without taking time to edit it in a professional way, or at least to provide some guidance to a novice biographer. ... Read more

Product Description
Mutability; uncertainty; a universe of precipitous change: these themes are at the heart of Sophocles' tragic vision. But nowhere are they elaborated with more urgency than in Women of Trachis. There are no subtle shifts of Fortune's favors in this tragedy, only stunning and total reversals, a relentless spinning of her fickle wheel.Thesis moves to crushing antithesis with an unparalleled violence at the moment of transformation.

Thought to have been written about 440 BC, midway through the poet's career, Women of Trachis has long suffered from neglect by scholars despite its sophistication and raw energy.This translation at last rescues the immense lyrical power and tragic grandeur of the play from obscurity, restoring the music of a poetry originally meant to be sung and danced collectively. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

New Translations
This is a stunningly beautiful translation of what is often thought to be Sophocles' weakest work. Captivating and lyrical, it paints beautifully the tragic tale of Hercules' death at the unwitting hands of his wife. The best, most poetic translation of a classic text I've ever read.

Thoughtful translation with exceptional additional material
Pound's translation is engaging, even if this is not the best of Sophocles's plays.This translation is historically important, however, in its advocation of drawing people back to the classics through lively andmodern translations that go beyond strict literalism.Pound famouslytranslates a line with a reference to concrete, and it works well in theplay while being close to the ancient Greek.While not being literal,Pound captures the essence.This approach was more revolutionary in the1950s than today, although it remains controversial.

For thoseinterested in Pound, definer of the modern movement in literature, man whorevised Eliot and brought Joyce to acclaim, this is a vital volume.Theforeword, introduction, and two afterwords deal (along with Pound's radicalphilosophy of translation) with Pound's imprisonment following World WarII, during which he was in Italy and speaking for the fascist government. How to interpret this and even the level of intensity of fascism arelong-pondered questions.After the war, he was kept in a cage in Italy("and when it rained, it rained on old Pound") and then in amental hospital where he was treated poorly.The material additional tothe play largely deals with his then-present situation in the hospital, andis at times quite moving as well as being historically informative.

This is not a volume for classical literalists; this is, however, awonderful volume for humanistic readers of the classics as well as forthose interested in this brilliant, though (or perhaps resultantly) mad,crucial (but increasingly overlooked) figure of the modern age.

Perhaps the poorest of Sophocles' plays.
In this play, considered by many critics to be the poorest of the seven extant plays of Sophocles (the speaches are too long and the development of the play is awkward), the wife of Heracles, Deianira, unknowingly sends apoisoned robe to her husband who has finally completed his labors. She isalso concerned that she has allowed a rival for the affections of herhusband to enter her household. Hercules has sent the captive Iole toDeianira. As Hercules lies dying, he orders his son Hyllus to marry Iole.Does Hercules truly love Iole? Even when dying, he is concerned for herfuture. ... Read more

Product Description
"Makes a great contribution to our understanding of Pound's economics and thus of his politics and his poetry. The scholarship is impressive. The book also serves to complement D. D. Paige's Selected Letters by collecting an entire range of Pound's letters that he chose to omit completely."--Tim Redman, University of Texas, Dallas

Ezra Pound is remembered today as much for his modernist poetry as for his vocal support of Mussolini and, before WWII, fascism. During the Depression, he corresponded frequently with monetary reformers, economic historians, and journalists in the United States, Great Britain, and Italy.

This annotated edition of many of Pound's letters from the period reveal his passionate efforts to effect global economic change. They provide a contemporary, albeit subjective insight into the debates raging among orthodox and radical economists during the 1930s. Pound's support for such new economic theories as social credit and free economy lay behind his hopes that economic reforms could alleviate the evils of poverty and prevent global war.

Ezra Pound's Economic Correspondence, 1933-1940 provides compelling new insights into a number of the most sensitive and controversial issues in Pound studies, including the way economic beliefs were mirrored in his poetry; his attitudes towards war, liberalism, and the press; his growing fascist convictions; and his developing anti-Semitism. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A good collection but a poorly bound book
Scholars will welcome a collection of Ezra Pound's economic correspondence and a long and helpful introduction by the editor Roxanna Preda.Pound's economics form a central part of all of his later work, led to his connection with Fascism, and landed him in Washington's St Elizabeth's Hospital mental wards after he evaded World War Two charges of treason.For scholars these letters are worth reading and worth having.

However, readers will find Ezra Pound's letters hard to read (he writes as if he was speaking in a variety of accents or dialects) and since editor Preda leaves the original spacing and spelling (mistakes and all) they will find these letters even more challenging. I think she made the right choices but, like the Cantos, readers need a period of adjustment. Ezra Pound's economic ideas are also obscure.They concern theories on the margins of economic discussion even in the 1930s.Pound is repetitive as he tries to instruct and persuade others.

I do criticize the University Press of Florida for not taking enough care with the book's binding--this is a scholarly book meant for long use in libraries and in personal collections!My front endpaper and title page are poorly sown.Otherwise the book is tight, well designed, and well put together.

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