Examining Ezra

May 29, 2007

I’m the first to admit my almost complete ignorance of the work of Ezra Pound. I duly did required reading in college, read some of the translations from the Chinese, and skimmed some of The Cantos. But I never really paid a lot of attention to his work and have generally understood his influence through the critical writing of others.

I am in the process of trying to rectify what seems like a rather serious gap in my already feeble understanding of the history of poetry and poetics. I have to admit that Pound’s poetry is much more interesting than I remember it and I look forward to digging into Hugh Kenner’s generally acclaimed book.

But I am much more interested in the poetry than the politics, though I recognize the impossibility of completely separating the two. So I found this exchange in the New York Review of Books to be interesting and amusing…

Tags: poetics, poetry