Ezra Pound, Italy, and the Cantos (Ezra Pound Center for Literature)

Ezra Pound lived in Italy spanning six decades (1920s to 1970s) and composed here most of his ambitious American and international epic, The Cantos. He largely employed Italian materials: landscapes, artworks, politics, history, people. Bacigalupo's study approaches Pound's poetry through its principal physical and cultural background proposing a new and rewarding reading of The Cantos as an account of things seen and noted with a poet's eye for the striking detail and telling phrase. We visit with Pound his favorite cities and landscapes (Rome, Venice, Rapallo) and encounter some of his foremost Italian peers, associates and translators. Bacigalupo offers readings of important and neglected writings by Pound and shows how he created an autobiographical myth out of his multifarious experience. We get to see the poet at work and are provided with new essential keys to a nuanced understanding of Pound's lively, tantalizing and contradictory poetic world. This is the first time that so much material concerning a central aspect of Pound's life and writing has been gathered in one volume. Ezra Pound lived in Italy spanning six decades (1920s to 1970s) and composed here most of his ambitious American and international epic, The Cantos. He largely employed Italian materials: landscapes, artworks, politics, history, people. Bacigalupo's study approaches Pound's poetry through its principal physical and cultural background proposing a new and rewarding reading of The Cantos as an account of things seen and noted with a poet's eye for the striking detail and telling phrase. We visit with Pound his favorite cities and landscapes (Rome, Venice, Rapallo) and encounter some of his foremost Italian peers, associates and translators. Bacigalupo offers readings of important and neglected writings by Pound and shows how he created an autobiographical myth out of his multifarious experience. We get to see the poet at work and are provided with new essential keys to a nuanced understanding of Pound's lively, tantalizing and contradictory poetic world. This is the first time that ... Publisher description Dedication 5 Contents 7 List of Figures 9 List of Abbreviations 11 Acknowledgments 13 Foreword 15 Part I: Places 19 1 How to Read The Cantos—Rapallo 21 2 City vs. Country—Venice 39 3 Greeting the Returning Gods—Rome 49 4 The Green World 59 Part II: Meetings 71 5 “And Some Climbing”—Dante 73 6 Nature, History, and Myth—Montale 87 7 “My Best Translator”—Izzo 105 8 “‘Ma’ Riess of Rapallo”—Laughlin 125 Part III: Readings 141 9 Poet as Anthropologist—“European Paideuma” 143 10 Moscardino and Enrico Pea (“pronounced peh-ah”) 163 11 “Republican Correspondence”—The Italian Cantos 72 and 73 187 12 The Pisan Cantos in Progress 215 Part IV: Endings 229 13 “I wish he would explain his explanation” 231 14 End to Torment?—E.P., H.D., and La Martinelli 247 15 Sant’Ambrogio in the Half-Light 273 16 America vs. Italy in the Posthumous Cantos 287 Afterword 301 Chronology 305 Notes 331 Index 357 "Pound spent most of his life in Italy and wrote about it incessantly in his poetry. Only by following his footsteps, acquaintances and composition processes can we make sense of and enjoy his forbidding Cantos. This study provides for the first time an account of Pound's Italian wanderings and of what they became in his work. After this study we will be able to read Pound as a guide to the places, people and books he loved, and we will share the poet traveler's joys and discoveries"-- Provided by publisher