Diptych Rome-London (Bibelots) [Paperback]

Ezra Pound (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1994 | Series: Bibelots

Two poems, "Homage to Sextus Propertius" and "Hugh Selwyn Mauberly," refer to the aftermath of World War I and consider the conflicts between the demands of the time and the self. Reprint.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Pound ( Personae ) always intended for his two great early poems, Homage to Sextus Propertius and Hugh Selwyn Mauberley , to appear as a diptych, and here they do. Written toward the end of the first World War and just following it, they are Pound's farewell to London and his early period, and in a larger sense are a swan song to an era. In Homage , Pound's often free translation and interpretation, he uses the Latin poet's ironic sensibility to suggest the crumbling of an age and its weariness: "Dry wreaths drop their petals, / their stalks are woven in baskets, / To-day we take the great breath of lovers, / to-morrow fate shuts us in." Pound called Mauberley "the poor man's Propertius" and "an endeavour to communicate with a blockheaded epoch." But while Propertius looks backward to 1890s decadence, Mauberley looks forward to high modernism. It has become the quintessential expression of the shattering of 19th-century optimism, summed up in Pound's famous lines: "There died a myriad, / And of the best, among them, / For an old bitch gone in the teeth, / For a botched civilization,/Charm, smiling at the good mouth, / Quick eyes gone under earth's lid, / For two gross of broken statues, / For a few thousand battered books." Mauberley is the more disillusioned--and the stronger--of the two poems; it captures the cynicism and emptiness that would prepare the way for horrors yet to come. And while it is useful to read the two works in the arrangement that Pound planned, the effect will not greatly change our understanding of either.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This volume contains the two lengthy poems "Homage to Sextus Propertius" (1917) and "Huge Selwyn Mauberly" (1920), which Pound combined in a limited edition in 1958 after leaving St. Elizabeth's Hospital, where he was confined for traitorous activities during World War II. Essential for serious poetry collections, especially at this price.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 58 pages
• Publisher: New Directions; Reprint edition (May 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811212688
• ISBN-13: 978-0811212687
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.6 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,472,865 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5.0 out of 5 stars great poems from major American poet, July 16, 2010

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Jack Alan Robbins (white plains, n.y.) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Diptych Rome-London (Bibelots) (Paperback)

Ezra Pound is one of the great if also greatly troubling American poets. These carefully edited early poems are among his very best and in a special and carefully edited edition at a very inexpensive price. If one nevers reads anything else by Pound this is what needs to be read and appreciated. The introduction and notes help situate the poems and place the context. Great reading too.