Pound Selected ∗letters∗ 1907–1941 (paper Only) - Softcover

POUND, E

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811201619 ISBN 13: 9780811201612

Publisher: New Directions, 1971

Synopsis

Ezra Pound would deserve a place in the literary history of the twentieth century if only for bringing to light and to publication the work, among others, of T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, James Joyce and William Carlos Williams. His tireless activities in behalf of other poets, artists, and literary ventures of every sort were in large part carried on by way of his voluminous correspondence. Eliot himself once commented that Pound's "epistolary style is masterly"--a judgment wholly confirmed by the 384 examples that comprise this selection. Included here are the poet's letters to Margaret Anderson of The Little Review, Harriet Monroe of Poetry, Harriet Shaw Weaver of The Egoist, H. L. Mencken and John Quinn; to such poets and writers as E. E. Cummings, Ernest Hemingway, Amy Lowell, Marianne Moore, Eliot, Joyce and, of course, his old friend Dr. Williams. Of exceptional interest, however, is Pound's massive correspondence with the young unknowns who wrote to him for advice. "The tone of his prose criticism," says D. D. Paige in his Introduction, "with its coruscations, its ellipses, its dogmatisms, its gay carnival air, its unwillingness to enjoy the safety gravity offers, its violence against entrenched stupidity and its championing of fresh writers--all that simply encouraged them to approach him. A tremendous lure!"

About this title

About the Author

New Directions has been the primary publisher of Ezra Pound in the U.S. since the founding of the press when James Laughlin published New Directions in Prose and Poetry 1936. That year Pound was fifty-one. In Laughlin’s first letter to Pound, he wrote: “Expect, please, no fireworks. I am bourgeois-born (Pittsburgh); have never missed a meal. . . . But full of ‘noble caring’ for something as inconceivable as the future of decent letters in the US.” Little did Pound know that into the twenty-first century the fireworks would keep exploding as readers continue to find his books relevant and meaningful.

Edition details

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 1971
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0811201619
• ISBN 13: 9780811201612
• Binding: Paperback