For this definitive collection of Pound's Literary Essays, his friend (and English editor) T. S. Eliot chose material from five earlier volumes: Pavannes and Divisions (1918), Instigations (1920), How to Read (1931), Make It New (1934), and Polite Essays (1937). 33 pieces are arranged in three groups: "The Art of Poetry," "The Tradition," and "Contemporaries." 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."

Included here are all of Pound's concert reviews and statements; the biweekly columns written under the pen name William Atheling for The New Age in London; articles from other periodicals; the complete text of the 1924 landmark volume Antheil and the Treatise on Harmony; extracts from books and letters, and the poet's additional writings on the subject of music. The pieces are organized chronologically, with illuminating commentary, thorough footnotes, and an index. Three appendixes complete this comprehensive volume; an analysis of Pound's theories of "absolute rhythm" and "Great Bass;" a glossary of important musical personalities mentioned in the text and the composer George Antheil's 1924 appreciation, "Why a Poet Quit the Muses."

Ezra Pound's classic book about the meaning of literature.

Gathers all the poet's art criticism from various sources, as well as his articles explaining the new approach of vortography, the English avantgarde movement.

Donated by Michael Dillon, June 2009.

This selection from the Cantos was made by Ezra Pound himself in 1965. It is intended to "indicate main elements" in the long poem -- his personal epic -- with which he was engaged for more than fifty years. His choice includes, of course, a number of the Cantos most admired by critics and anthologists, such as Canto XIII ("Kung [Confucius] walked by the dynastic temple..."), Canto XLV ("With usura hath no man a house of good stone...") and the passage from The Pisan Cantos (LXXXI) beginning "What thou lovest well remains / the rest is dross," and so the book is an ideal introduction for newcomers to the great work. But it has, too, particular interest for the already initiated reader and the specialist, in its revelation, through Pound's own selection of "main elements," of the relative importance which he himself placed on various motifs as they figure in the architecture of the whole poem. Book jacket.

Originally published in 1950 under title: The letters of Ezra Pound, 1907-1941.