Ezra Pound and Roman Poetry is an examination of a crucial phase in the development of Pound as translator and, therefore, of creative translation in the twentieth century. The book provides a survey of Pound's attempt to appropriate the poetry of Classical Rome, by tracing the histories of the poet's involvement with Horace, Virgil, Catullus, Ovid and Propertius, in order to express his own marginal position within London during the First World War. No extensive critical discussion is attempted, but attention is given to Pound's critical writings on the Latin poets as well as his translations from their work. Dr Davidson also treats other aspects of Pound's problematic relation to the Classical Tradition: the use and abuse of dictionaries; Laforgue and Baudelaire as a third term haunting Pound's translations; the difficult monolith of English classicism; the invention of an oppositional romanitas. It is hoped that this work may encourage others to produce the comprehensive survey which Pound's sustained and Protean relationship to the classical languages would appear to demand. Pound's readings of Latin poetry are inevitably readings also of English poetry, in the context of England, and particularly London, in the first two decades of the twentieth century.

Ezra Pound has been called "the inventor of modern poetry in English." The verse and criticism which he produced during the early years of the twentieth century very largely determined the directions of creative writing in our time; virtually every major poet in England and America today has acknowledged his help or influence. Pound's lyric genius, his superb technique, and his fresh insight into literary problems make him one of the small company of men who through the centuries have kept poetry alive—one of the great innovators. This book offers a compact yet representative selection of Ezra Pound's poems and translations. The span covered is Pound's entire writing career, from his early lyrics and the translations of Provençal songs to his English version of Sophocles' Trachiniae. Included are parts of his best known works—the Chinese translations, the sequence called Hugh Selwyn Mauberly, the Homage to Sextus Propertius. The Cantos, Pound's major epic, are presented in generous selections, chosen to emphasize the main themes of the whole poem.

Ezra Pound makes his Penguin Classics debut with this unique selection of his early poems and prose, edited with an introductory essay and notes by Pound expert Ira Nadel. The poetry includes such early masterpieces as “The Seafarer,” “Homage to Sextus Propertius,” “Hugh Selwyn Mauberley,” and the first eight of Pound’s incomparable “Cantos.” The prose includes a series of articles and critical pieces, with essays on Imagism, Vorticism, Joyce, and the well-known “Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry.” First time in Penguin Classics Includes generous selections of Pound's poetry, as well as an assortment of prose

Explores W.B. Yeats and Ezra Pound's relationship as played out against the backdrop of Mussolini's Italy in the 1920s and 1930s and shows how Yeats, Pound, and others in their Italian network developed a late modernist style aimed at effecting world change.

Ezra Pound and Roman Poetry is an examination of a crucial phase in the development of Pound as translator and, therefore, of creative translation in the twentieth century. The book provides a survey of Pound's attempt to appropriate the poetry of Classical Rome, by tracing the histories of the poet's involvement with Horace, Virgil, Catullus, Ovid and Propertius, in order to express his own marginal position within London during the First World War. No extensive critical discussion is attempted, but attention is given to Pound's critical writings on the Latin poets as well as his translations from their work. Dr Davidson also treats other aspects of Pound's problematic relation to the Classical Tradition: the use and abuse of dictionaries; Laforgue and Baudelaire as a third term haunting Pound's translations; the difficult monolith of English classicism; the invention of an oppositional romanitas. It is hoped that this work may encourage others to produce the comprehensive survey which Pound's sustained and Protean relationship to the classical languages would appear to demand. Pound's readings of Latin poetry are inevitably readings also of English poetry, in the context of England, and particularly London, in the first two decades of the twentieth century.

This third and final volume of A. David Moody's critical life of Ezra Pound presents Pound's personal tragedy in a tragic time. In this volume, we experience the 1939-1945 World War, and Pound's hubristic involvement in Fascist Italy's part in it; we encounter the grave moral and intellectual error of Pound holding the Jewish race responsible for the war; and his consequent downfall, being charged with treason, condemned as an anti-Semite, and shut up for twelve years in an institution for the insane. Further, we see Pound stripped for life, by his own counsel and wife, of his civil and human rights. Pound endured what was inflicted upon him, justly and unjustly, without complaint; and continued his lifetime's effort to promote, in and through his Cantos and his translations, a consciousness of a possible humane and just social order. The contradictions run deep and compel, as tragedy does, a steady and unprejudiced contemplation and an answering depth of comprehension.

‘An extraordinary book of real passionate research’ Edmund de Waal In 1945, Ezra Pound was due to stand trial for treason for his broadcasts in Fascist Italy during the Second World War. But before the trial could take place Pound was pronounced insane. Escaping a potential death sentence he was shipped off to St Elizabeths Hospital near Washington, DC, where he was held for over a decade. At the hospital, Pound was at his most contradictory and most controversial: a genius writer – ‘The most important living poet in the English language’ according to T. S. Eliot – but also a traitor and now, seemingly, a madman. But he remained a magnetic figure. Eliot, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell and John Berryman all went to visit him at what was perhaps the world’s most unorthodox literary salon: convened by a fascist and held in a lunatic asylum. Told through the eyes of his illustrious visitors, The Bughouse captures the essence of Pound – the artistic flair, the profound human flaws – whilst telling the grand story of politics and art in the twentieth century.

The essential collection of Ezra Pound's poetry--newly expanded and annotated with essays by Richard Sieburth, T. S. Eliot, and John Berryman.