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Confucious to Cummings
Third Printing...
- GenresPoetryAnthologies
360 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1964
8 people are currently reading
171 people want to read
About the author
Ezra Pound
496 books1,005 followersEzra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet, critic and intellectual who was a major figure of the Modernist movement in early-to-mid 20th century poetry.
Pound's The Cantos contains music and bears a title that could be translated as The Songs—although it never is. Pound's ear was tuned to the motz et sons of troubadour poetry where, as musicologist John Stevens has noted, "melody and poem existed in a state of the closest symbiosis, obeying the same laws and striving in their different media for the same sound-ideal - armonia."
In his essays, Pound wrote of rhythm as "the hardest quality of a man's style to counterfeit." He challenged young poets to train their ear with translation work to learn how the choice of words and the movement of the words combined. But having translated texts from 10 different languages into English, Pound found that translation did not always serve the poetry: "The grand bogies for young men who want really to learn strophe writing are Catullus and François Villon. I personally have been reduced to setting them to music as I cannot translate them." While he habitually wrote out verse rhythms as musical lines, Pound did not set his own poetry to music.
Pound's The Cantos contains music and bears a title that could be translated as The Songs—although it never is. Pound's ear was tuned to the motz et sons of troubadour poetry where, as musicologist John Stevens has noted, "melody and poem existed in a state of the closest symbiosis, obeying the same laws and striving in their different media for the same sound-ideal - armonia."
In his essays, Pound wrote of rhythm as "the hardest quality of a man's style to counterfeit." He challenged young poets to train their ear with translation work to learn how the choice of words and the movement of the words combined. But having translated texts from 10 different languages into English, Pound found that translation did not always serve the poetry: "The grand bogies for young men who want really to learn strophe writing are Catullus and François Villon. I personally have been reduced to setting them to music as I cannot translate them." While he habitually wrote out verse rhythms as musical lines, Pound did not set his own poetry to music.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
August 11, 2023
"{Pound) spends one-quarter of his time on his own poetry and three-quarters raising money for other poets".---Ernest Hemingway
Ezra Pound always insisted that great poetry, in the words of Cicero had to "enlighten, delight and teach". I recommend this anthology of world poetry, from ancient China to modern, and modernist America, above all others. If you are a poetry fanatic, as I am, you will find treasure in Ez's eccentric (to us, not to him) choices of great poets and their poetry. If you have no taste for poetry CONFUCIUS TO CUMMINGS will show you why some things can only be said through poetry. You will find only the classics here, Pound hated what he called "the starters of crazes". He begins with Confucius (who Pound correctly always called Kung; his editors must have vetoed the original name as too foreign-sounding to sell), for Pound insisted that "The Odes of Confucius" not only made for great poetry but laid out the basis for a just society: "For if a man have not order within him, he cannot spread order about him". "The Odes" were once required reading for becoming a Mandarin in imperial China, comme il faut, There is no sense to poetry if it does nor serve both pedagogical and political ends. THE CANTOS OF EZRA POUND are modeled on Dante's DIVINE COMEDY, yet Ezra, a stubborn old cuss, devotes the middle section of this collection to Dante's contemporary, Guido Cavalcanti, featuring the motif of "dove sta memoria" (where the memory liveth); a pitch I once threw an an Italian-American beauty but did not receive my reward, unlike Guido. Shakespeare is here, of course, the "Sonnets" get one selection, and the poetic outtakes from the plays is idiosyncratic; no Hamlet soliloquy or "full-fathom five thy father lies" from THE TEMPEST. Pound understood The Bard was a poet first and a playwright second. Another irresistible touch: Martin Luther, St. Francis of Assisi, Queen Elizabeth I and Henry VIII are all quoted in a reminder of the times when religious reformers and statesmen and women were expected to write poetry. Pound worshipped Browning and Whitman. both amply represented, and omits Tennyson. Uncle Ezra believed poetry was something "anyone might say in a single moment" and Lord Alfred was all affectation. Among the moderns he finds space for his great friend and beneficiary, T.S. Eliot, and E.E. Cummings, "the only name in American poetry today". CONFUCIUS TO CUMMINGS is both a college semester class taught by the greatest of all twentieth-century worshippers of poetry and a classical education in history, politics, religion and how "a civilization rises and falls by its use of language".
Ezra Pound always insisted that great poetry, in the words of Cicero had to "enlighten, delight and teach". I recommend this anthology of world poetry, from ancient China to modern, and modernist America, above all others. If you are a poetry fanatic, as I am, you will find treasure in Ez's eccentric (to us, not to him) choices of great poets and their poetry. If you have no taste for poetry CONFUCIUS TO CUMMINGS will show you why some things can only be said through poetry. You will find only the classics here, Pound hated what he called "the starters of crazes". He begins with Confucius (who Pound correctly always called Kung; his editors must have vetoed the original name as too foreign-sounding to sell), for Pound insisted that "The Odes of Confucius" not only made for great poetry but laid out the basis for a just society: "For if a man have not order within him, he cannot spread order about him". "The Odes" were once required reading for becoming a Mandarin in imperial China, comme il faut, There is no sense to poetry if it does nor serve both pedagogical and political ends. THE CANTOS OF EZRA POUND are modeled on Dante's DIVINE COMEDY, yet Ezra, a stubborn old cuss, devotes the middle section of this collection to Dante's contemporary, Guido Cavalcanti, featuring the motif of "dove sta memoria" (where the memory liveth); a pitch I once threw an an Italian-American beauty but did not receive my reward, unlike Guido. Shakespeare is here, of course, the "Sonnets" get one selection, and the poetic outtakes from the plays is idiosyncratic; no Hamlet soliloquy or "full-fathom five thy father lies" from THE TEMPEST. Pound understood The Bard was a poet first and a playwright second. Another irresistible touch: Martin Luther, St. Francis of Assisi, Queen Elizabeth I and Henry VIII are all quoted in a reminder of the times when religious reformers and statesmen and women were expected to write poetry. Pound worshipped Browning and Whitman. both amply represented, and omits Tennyson. Uncle Ezra believed poetry was something "anyone might say in a single moment" and Lord Alfred was all affectation. Among the moderns he finds space for his great friend and beneficiary, T.S. Eliot, and E.E. Cummings, "the only name in American poetry today". CONFUCIUS TO CUMMINGS is both a college semester class taught by the greatest of all twentieth-century worshippers of poetry and a classical education in history, politics, religion and how "a civilization rises and falls by its use of language".
October 9, 2014
The most interesting thing about this anthology was the incredible and idiosyncratic breadth of Pound's selections. While I didn't love the anthology by any means, it was my first time being exposed to many of these poets, especially those whom Pound elects to include in translation. Our knowledge of world literature (like our knowledge of most other art forms beyond our own borders, or with slightly more liberality, our own language) is sadly lacking. Pounds apparent familiarity with so much of the western tradition and a good number of writers from well outside of it and his determination to value what he's found is something not often seen. For all his personal issues, I've found reading his work or thoughts on literature for themselves always interesting, often challenging, and at times quite enlightening.
February 18, 2021
Great anthology from "il miglior fabbro". Panoramic scope mingled with sparse commentary to the history of poetry from the master.
Currently reading
June 3, 2021~pg 126
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January 12, 2021Ezra Pound’s idea of the creme de la creme of poetry. Although there is little about Pound, his own work and his judgements that I don’t dislike and disagree with, there are gems here that aren’t in the orthodox canon: George Chapman, Villon, Michelangelo’s poetry, Christopher Smart, Arthur Golding. It’s worth looking through if you can find it.
November 16, 2014
I read passages from this text to the love of my life. If you don't like it, go fuck thyself. Where else are we getting Li Po, Ben Jonson, and Gautier on the same platform on earth? Certainly some long-forgotten mad fucking ecstatic subway. The Mad Houdini Professorial Bum Poet. Where ye be. Enough-Enoch. Night.
May 11, 2016
Come away, come away, death,
And in sad cypress let me be laid.
Fly away, fly away, breath;
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
O, prepare it!
My part of death, no one so true
Did share it.
And in sad cypress let me be laid.
Fly away, fly away, breath;
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
O, prepare it!
My part of death, no one so true
Did share it.
January 3, 2010
exercises in attention
June 3, 2016
I've read many an anthology of best poetry and there's always a layer of "really? You included that?". Not so in Confucius to Cummings. It's lengthened my to-read poetry list immeasurably.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews