The Cantos of Ezra Pound (New Directions Books)

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Pound was reluctant to publish these late cantos, but the appearance in 1967 of a pirate edition of Cantos 110–116 forced his hand. Laughlin pushed Pound to publish an authorised edition, and the poet responded by supplying the more-or-less abandoned drafts and fragments he had, plus two fragments dating from 1941. The resulting book, therefore, can hardly be described as representing Pound's definitive planned ending to the poem. This situation has been further complicated by the addition of more fragments in editions of the complete poem published after the poet's death. One of these was labelled "Canto CXX" at one point, on no particular authority. This title was later removed. Huang, G. (1997). Whitmanism, imagism, and modernism in China and America. Plainsboro: Susquehanna University Press.

LXII–LXXI (The Adams Cantos) [ edit ] John Adams: "the man who at certain points /made us / at certain points / saved us" (Canto LXII). First published in Cantos LII–LXXI. Norfolk Conn.: New Directions, 1940. Preda, R. (2017). Calendar of composition for three cantos. The Cantos Project. http://thecantosproject.ed.ac.uk/index.php/overview/calendar-of-composition. Wellen, Paul. “Analytic Dictionary of Ezra Pound’s Chinese Characters.” Paideuma: A Journal Devoted to Ezra Pound Scholarship25.3 (1996): 59-100. Cantos VIII–XI draw on the story of Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, 15th-century poet, condottiero, lord of Rimini and patron of the arts. Quoting extensively from primary sources, including Malatesta's letters, Pound especially focuses on the building of the church of San Francesco, also known as the Tempio Malatestiano. Designed by Leon Battista Alberti and decorated by artists including Piero della Francesca and Agostino di Duccio, this was a landmark Renaissance building, being the first church to use the Roman triumphal arch as part of its structure. For Pound, who spent a good deal of time seeking patrons for himself, James Joyce, Eliot and a string of little magazines and small presses, the role of the patron was a crucial cultural question, and Malatesta is the first in a line of ruler-patrons to appear in The Cantos.Pearlman, D. (1969). The barb of time: On the unity of Ezra Pound’s cantos. Oxford: Oxford University Press. The 43 tiers of steps in grey or reddish limestone have been often renovated since the end of the sixteenth century and are in part modern. They can seat 20,000 spectators.”] The Noh figure of Awoi (from AOI NO UE), ravaged by jealousy, reappears together with the poet Ono no Komachi, the central character in two more Noh plays translated by Pound. She represents a life spent meditating on beauty which resulted in vanity and ended in loss and solitude. The canto draws to a close with the phrase Lux enim ("light indeed") and an image of the oval moon.

Law, S. S. M. (2011). Being in traditional Chinese landscape painting. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 32(4), 369–382.Pond, Ezra. Poetry and Prose. Contributions to Periodicals. Eds. Lea Baechler, A. Walton Litz and James Longenbach. 11 vols. New York: Garland, 1991. Graham, A. C. (Ed., Trans.) (2008). Poems of the late T’ang. New York: New York Review Books Classics.

Su, K., & Preda, R. (2020). Companion to canto XLIX. The Cantos Project. https://thecantosproject.ed.ac.uk/index.php/canto-xlix. Tao, N. (2000). Canto IV and the ‘Peach-Blossom-Fountain’ poetic. In H. M. Dennis (Ed.), Ezra Pound and poetic influence (pp. 114–129). Amsterdam: Rodopi. Pound was also an important figure for the poets of the Beat Generation, especially Snyder and Allen Ginsberg. Snyder's interest in things Chinese and Japanese stemmed from his early reading of Pound's writings, and his long poem Mountains and Rivers Without End (1965–1996) reflects his reading of The Cantos in many of the formal devices used. In Ginsberg's development, reading Pound was influential in his move away from the long, Whitmanesque lines of his early poetry, and towards the more varie Canto lines level – Here the reader encounters the poem itself together with the new multimedia annotation. Within the glosses, we find links, images, maps and other supporting material. Canto LXXXIX continues with Benton and also draws on Alexander del Mar's A History of Money Systems. The same examples of good rule are drawn on, with the addition of the Emperor Aurelian. Possibly in defence of his focus on so much "unpoetical" material, Pound quotes Rodolphus Agricola to the effect that one writes "to move, to teach or to delight" ( ut moveat, ut doceat, ut delectet), with the implication that the present cantos are designed to teach. The naturalists Alexander von Humboldt and Louis Agassiz are mentioned in passing.Canto CVI turns to visions of the goddess as fertility symbol via Demeter and Persephone, in her lunar, love aspect as Selena, Helen and Aphrodite Euploia ("of safe voyages") and as hunter Athene (Proneia: "of forethought," the form in which she is worshiped at Delphi) and Diana (through quotes from Layamon). The sun as Zeus/Helios also features. These vision fragments are cross-cut with an invocation of the Taoist Kuan Tzu ( Book of Master Kuan). This work argues that the mind should rule the body as the basis of good living and good governance. Link, P. (2016). A magician of Chinese poetry. ChinaFile. https://www.chinafile.com/nyrb-china-archive/magician-of-chinese-poetry. The next five cantos (III–VII), again drawing heavily on Pound's Imagist past for their technique, are essentially based in the Mediterranean, drawing on classical mythology, Renaissance history, the world of the troubadours, Sappho's poetry, a scene from the legend of El Cid that introduces the theme of banking and credit, and Pound's own visits to Venice to create a textual collage saturated with neoplatonist images of clarity and light.