Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

• translated the Old English work Seafarer

The Cantos

• long incomplete poem in 120 sections (cantos)
• themes of economics, governance and culture
• inclusions of Chinese characters as well as quotations in European languages
• broad range of allusion to historical events

"Hugh Selwyn Mauberley"

• uses two alter egos to discus the first 12 years of his career
• reconstructs literary London of the Edwardian period but also takes us to the catastrophe of WWI and its effects on the literary world
• in the first section of the poem, Pound portrays himself as "E.P.", a typical turn of the century aesthete
• in the second, he becomes "Mauberley," an aesthete of a different kind

It begins:

E. P. ODE POUR L'ELECTION DE SON SEPULCHRE
For three years, out of key with his time,
He strove to resuscitate the dead art
Of poetry; to maintain "the sublime"
In the old sense. Wrong from the start --
No, hardly, but, seeing he had been born
In a half savage country, out of date;
Bent resolutely on wringing lilies from the acorn;
Capaneus; trout for factitious bait:

"The Lake Isle"

• parody of Yeats' "The Lake Isle of Innisfree"

O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves,
Give me in due time, I beseech you, a little tobacco-shop,
With the little bright boxes
      piled up neatly upon the shelves
And the loose fragment cavendish
      and the shag,
And the bright Virginia
      loose under the bright glass cases,
And a pair of scales
      not too greasy,
And the votailles dropping in for a word or two in passing,
For a flip word, and to tidy their hair a bit.

  O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves,
Lend me a little tobacco-shop,
      or install me in any profession
Save this damn'd profession of writing,
      where one needs one's brains all the time.

"The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter"

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the lookout?
At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-en, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.

"In a station of the Metro"

• modeled on the haiku structure

In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.