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Selected Prose 1909-1965 book cover
Selected Prose 1909-1965
1973
First Published
4.00
Average Rating
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In making this selection, writes William Cookson in his introduction to this paperback edition of early and out-of-print writings, my aim has been to show the unity of Ezra Pound's concern. The sixty-six pieces in Pound's Selected Prose 1909-1965 are arranged thematically, and while they are organized chronologically within several groupings, there are natural cross-currents of thoughts among them. Particular emphasis, however, is given to the article concerned with Civilization, Money and History. This section contains such essential texts as the ABC of Economics and What is Money For? as well as two essays - Gold and Work and A Visiting Car - translated from Pound's Italian and never before published in English in their entirety. Much space is devoted, too, to Pound's evaluation of his native America, its history, culture, economy, and his 1913 essay, Patria Mia, is reprinted.
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Author

Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Author · 51 books

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet, critic and intellectual who was a major figure of the Modernist movement in early-to-mid 20th century poetry. Pound's The Cantos contains music and bears a title that could be translated as The Songs—although it never is. Pound's ear was tuned to the motz et sons of troubadour poetry where, as musicologist John Stevens has noted, "melody and poem existed in a state of the closest symbiosis, obeying the same laws and striving in their different media for the same sound-ideal - armonia." In his essays, Pound wrote of rhythm as "the hardest quality of a man's style to counterfeit." He challenged young poets to train their ear with translation work to learn how the choice of words and the movement of the words combined. But having translated texts from 10 different languages into English, Pound found that translation did not always serve the poetry: "The grand bogies for young men who want really to learn strophe writing are Catullus and François Villon. I personally have been reduced to setting them to music as I cannot translate them." While he habitually wrote out verse rhythms as musical lines, Pound did not set his own poetry to music.

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