Literary Essays of Ezra Pound (Paperback)

by Ezra Pound (Author), T. S. Eliot (Introduction)
Key Phrases: coeur simple, early translators, verbal manifestation, Henry James, New York, Del Garbo (more...)

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Product Description
Pound, Literary Essays.

Product Details

• Paperback: 484 pages
• Publisher: New Directions (March 1, 1968)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811201570
• ISBN-13: 978-0811201575
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #57,532 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great essays from the modernist era, March 6, 2000

By	Jason Hayashi (Orange County, CA) - See all my reviews

I find that reading just the first two essay was worth the money I spent on this book. Pound writes his literary essay with creativity, intelligence, and humor that are rare even among the best essayists. "A retrospect" is a great guide to use for those who takes interest in writing poetry. Likewise "How to Read" will serve as a great crash course for the history of poetry, and provides us with an instruction on how to approach poetry. His personal critique of other writers are also worth reading.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Introduction to Modernist Poetry, October 10, 2008

By	S. Schuler - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Pound's literary essays are an indispensable companion not only to his own poetry, but also to what is generally referred to as modernist poetry, especially that of T. S. Eliot and the later Yeats, in general. The first few essays announce a clear break with the poetry of the 19th century and urge a return to the authenticity (my term, not Pound's) of earlier, premodern styles of lyric poetry. Some of Pound's assertions may not make sense to a reader who is largely unfamiliar with the development of lyric poetry from the Renaissance to the 19th century, or with Pound's poetry itself--the essays are not written for the uninitiated. I highly recommend reading Pound's poems alongside his essays since the two always elucidate each other, the essays providing an explanation of the poems' rationales, and the poems offering examples of the essays' arguments. But Pound's explanations are typically lucid in themselves, and one could hardly find a clearer articulation of the modernist aesthetic agenda.