The Pound Era [Paperback]

Hugh Kenner (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

"Hugh Kenner's The Pound Era could as well be known as the Kenner era, for there is no critic who has more firmly established his claim to valuable literary property than has Kenner to the first three decades of the 20th century in England. Author of pervious studies of Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Wyndham Lewis and Pound (to name a few), Kenner bestrides modern literature if not like a colossus then at least a presence of formidable proportions. A new book by him is certainly an event....A demanding, enticing book that glitters at the same time it antagonizes...."The Pound Era presents us with an idiosyncratic but sharply etched skeletal view of our immediate literary heritage."--The New York Times

"It is notoriously difficult to recognize degrees of pre-eminence among one's near-contemporaries. We talk now of the age of Donne, a label that would have seemed bizarre to Ben Johnson. Will The Pound Era seem an appropriate designation, 50 or 100 years hence, for the epoch we think of as 'modern'? Mr. Kenner's brilliantly written book establishes an excellent case for supposing the answer to be 'Yes.'"--The Economist

"Mr. Kenner's study...is not so much a book as a library, or better, a new kind of book in which biography, history, and the analysis of literature are so harmoniously articulated that every page has a narrative sense....The Pound Era is a book to be read and reread and studied. For the student of modern letters it is a treasure, for the general reader it is one of the most interesting books he will ever pick up in a lifetime of reading."--National Review

About the Author

Hugh Kenner (1923-2003) was one of America's great literary critics. He wrote on a range of subjects that includes Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, T. S. Eliot, and geodesic domes.

Product Details

• Paperback: 606 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press (September 18, 1973)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520024273
• ISBN-13: 978-0520024274
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.2 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #149,178 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Becoming Pound, December 15, 2005

By 

Arch Llewellyn "arch-l" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Pound Era (Paperback)

For years I didn't get Pound, and I once asked a friend if the Emperor had no clothes. "No, but to get Pound you have to become Pound," she said. That remains one of the truest things I've heard about Pound, and about the modern poetic he inspired. From the brave spirits who hope to apprehend his writing, Pound demands a total commitment to his manner of thinking, his myriad languages, his vast reading, his eccentric economic/social theories, his storehouse of memories, and the evolution of his ideas over nearly a century. What he brought to poetry was the idea that poems aren't ornamented expressions of deep feeling, but precise instruments for exploring politics, religion, history, economics, science and just about everything human.

Hugh Kenner came closer to being Pound than anyone (though Peter Makin gives him a good run for his money), and "The Pound Era" isn't so much a work of literary criticism as it is an intricate daybook, or maybe a modern novel, on coming to terms with the demands Pound makes on a reader. It's a one-of-a-kind study that should be read and re-read by anyone even half-interested in Pound's achievement. But it also (to my mind at least) shares some of the Master's flaws as Kenner makes great, sometimes showy, occasionally mannered paratactic leaps between seemingly unrelated details to convey a picture of Pound's age. It's well worth looking past the stylistic excesses though for Kenner's unparalleled explication of one of the best known and least understood 20th-century poets.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great work of lit. criticism with a pinch of history, August 16, 2002

By 

J. Ott "John Ott" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Pound Era (Paperback)

This is an impressive read. I came to it at just the right time in my life. I had been reading the poems of Marianne Moore and Buckminster Fuller as well as studying Ancient Greek. This is a dense but ultimately very rewarding book. It incorporates passages of troubadour lyric and Greek and name-drops a lot of historical characters with which you may or may not be familiar. For those interested in Pound and his times, I highly recommend it. For those unsure, check out the excerpts that Amazon provides. This is not everyone's cup of tea. But, as I said, I came to this at the right time in my life.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best of its genre, March 19, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Pound Era (Paperback)

What's all the fuss about cranky ol' Ezra Pound? This may answer that question. It may also be the finest piece of literary criticism in the language, the best work of a man who is not merely a critic of the modernist writers, but a great modernist himself. No one who loves 20th Century poetry, fiction and visual art should miss this book.