What do you think?
Rate this book
Ezra Pound: Poet #2
Ezra Pound, Poet. Volume II: The Epic Years 1921-1939
The second volume of David Moody's acclaimed biography offers the first thoroughly comprehensive account of Pound's life and work. Covers Ezra Pound's middle years, weaving together the illuminating story of his life, his achievement as a poet and a composer, and his one-man crusade for economic justice Provides new insight into Pound's complicated personal relationships. This second volume of A. David Moody's full-scale portrait, covering Ezra Pound's middle years, weaves together into a single highly readable and challenging narrative, in a way that has not been done before, the illuminating story of his life, his achievement as a poet and a composer, and his one-man crusade for economic justice. There is new insight into his complicated personal relationships. There are detailed accounts of the composition of his two operas and of his original contribution to the theory of harmony. A canto by canto and decad by decad elucidation of the form and meaning of the first seventy-one cantos of his epic reveals their hitherto unperceived musical structures and their overall design. The thinking behind his support for Mussolini's economic programme during the Great Depression of the 1930s is brought to light, and shown to be not fascist but essentially true to the principles of the American Revolution, and, behind that, to Confucian ideas of responsible government. At the same time it is made clear that he saw only what he wanted to see in Mussolini's Fascism, and later in Hitler's Nazism, and was blind to their darker policies. And it is clear that he went most seriously wrong in deploying, as a weapon in his war on the injustice of the capitalist financial system, the anti-Semitism endemic in Europe and America and at that time turning murderous in Nazi Germany. Pound is revealed as a great poet and a flawed idealist caught up in the turmoil of his darkening time and struggling, sometimes blindly and in error and self-contradiction, to be a force for enlightenment. A third volume will carry on the narrative of his life and works from 1939 to his death in 1972.
456 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2014
8 people are currently reading
63 people want to read
About the author
Anthony David Moody
15 books4 followersAnthony David Moody is Professor of English at the University of York.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
November 25, 2014
The first volume of Moody's biography helped me no end as I was finishing up my dissertation, and this volume lives up to my memories. It's stylishly written, and a perfect mix of literary criticism (long condensations of the Cantos, with at least a sentence or two on each of them) and biography (focusing on what Pound did and said, rather than trying to get into his mind or emotions).
It's truly astonishing how important Pound was as a literary force; people have been making that point since, at least, Kenner's 'Pound Era.' But Moody is more willing to criticize Pound's ideas (rather often bad and/or immoral), without believing that their badness or immorality makes the man himself uninteresting. In fact, he assumes exactly the opposite, and tries to put the best possible spin on Pound's prose... right up until he says something truly despicable (usually about 'the Jews'). At that point Moody comes down on him as hard as anyone should.
Pound is fascinating because he's a kind of 20th century Ideal Type: democrat, yes, but also fascist; materialist, yes, but also obsessed with medieval metaphysics; writer of astonishing abilities who lets leftover romantic stupidities about poetry (essentially turning it into a religious vocation) distort what should have been one of the greatest collected poems of the century.
He wrote some incredible poems; he had an uncanny sense for what was truly important in art and worked tirelessly to promote it (see: Eliot, Joyce, Vivaldi). It's often said that Pound never really went insane, that the insanity was all a legal fiction designed to keep him off the gallows. But it's impossible to read the last third of this book and not see Pound's as a deeply disordered mind. Moody doesn't draw that conclusion; he simply gives you the evidence to draw your own, while making his own argument. A model biography.
It's truly astonishing how important Pound was as a literary force; people have been making that point since, at least, Kenner's 'Pound Era.' But Moody is more willing to criticize Pound's ideas (rather often bad and/or immoral), without believing that their badness or immorality makes the man himself uninteresting. In fact, he assumes exactly the opposite, and tries to put the best possible spin on Pound's prose... right up until he says something truly despicable (usually about 'the Jews'). At that point Moody comes down on him as hard as anyone should.
Pound is fascinating because he's a kind of 20th century Ideal Type: democrat, yes, but also fascist; materialist, yes, but also obsessed with medieval metaphysics; writer of astonishing abilities who lets leftover romantic stupidities about poetry (essentially turning it into a religious vocation) distort what should have been one of the greatest collected poems of the century.
He wrote some incredible poems; he had an uncanny sense for what was truly important in art and worked tirelessly to promote it (see: Eliot, Joyce, Vivaldi). It's often said that Pound never really went insane, that the insanity was all a legal fiction designed to keep him off the gallows. But it's impossible to read the last third of this book and not see Pound's as a deeply disordered mind. Moody doesn't draw that conclusion; he simply gives you the evidence to draw your own, while making his own argument. A model biography.
October 9, 2014
(To shorten what might be the longest review in history, I have considered a variety of aspects of this book in a series of Blog posts. Anyone who wants to know the thinking behind what I'm about to say can check them out. Go to http://ladygodivaandme.blogspot.com.au and click A.David Moody's name on the side bar.)
A David Moody’s second volume of his biography of Pound is a fascinating book, not so much for what it is, as for the spectacle of a writer trying to avoid the evidence he is too honest not to amass.
On the surface it seems to be an attempt at a balanced look at Pound’s middle years, his life and writing between the time he left London and the start of the Second World War, which he spent mostly in Italy. It is the time in which the first Cantos were written, and in which Pound’s obsession with his peculiar understanding of economics became over whelming. During this time he became a vociferous supporter of Mussolini and Italian Fascism, and increasingly, stridently anti-Semitic in his writings.
But by the end of the book Moody has shown that Pound had become the type of Ideologue he was always criticising, driven by an increasingly delusional belief that his increasingly difficult 'poetry' would save the world from war: that this man who promoted Confucius as the cure for western Society's ills starting with his belief in right naming, was hammering away at a typewriter and sending out his increasingly strident distorted propaganda to increasingly extreme political outlets. He had become incapable of realising that words have effects in the real world, that in the real world people were being done (to misquote Geoffrey Hill) by words. And he was becoming stridently Anti-Semetic and pro hitler. By the end of the book he sounds like someone suffering from megalomania and monomania.
What Moody doesn't investigate is the question that goes begging. Given the lack of intelligence, perception, insight, knowledge or balance.....why is that man worthy of our interest? How is it that a man who manifestly failed in his grandiose schemes, which were never rational or possible in the first place, could retain the interest and sympathy of other people?
What was missing from part one was a sense of Pound as a person. It's even more absent in part two. And this makes it difficult to understand why such a range of intelligent people, who did not share his politics, could be so loyal to him even after the Second World war. Something vital is missing from the biography.
Moody deals honestly with the ugliness of what passes for Pound's political thought, but he's not so willing to deal with criticisms of Pound's poetry. He wants to keep the two things separate. And that seems to be the book's greatest weakness. Reading this book you'd be forgiven for thinking that everyone agrees Pound was brilliant and there isn't a great deal of discussion going on. Moody takes Pound at his own evaluation. As in volume one, he interrupts the narrative to deal with the poems. For the Cantos he relies on paraphrase, though he does attempt the standard explanation of how they cohere.
Since I suspect more people will read this book than have read the poems, they may well find Moody's synopsis of the Cantos far more interesting than the Cantos. Though anyone who has read them might be baffled by a comment like: “Evidently it is necessary to possess or to be willing to acquire a little historical knowledge.” P166 which is an example of cosmic understatement. What does become obvious is how private the cantos are. As Randall Jarrell wrote in the 1950s, if you knew everything Ezra Pound knew, and had read and remembered everything Pound had, and you believed in everything he did, then the Cantos might make sense.
Moody stops at the point where his evidence takes him and refuses to consider its implications. It is this way in which the book seems to be travelling to a conclusion while the writer goes the other way which makes it so perversely enjoyable to read. There is a surface reasonableness to the prose which I think hides the lack of real discernment in the book.
Enjoyable, easy to read, but at the same time not a good biography.
A David Moody’s second volume of his biography of Pound is a fascinating book, not so much for what it is, as for the spectacle of a writer trying to avoid the evidence he is too honest not to amass.
On the surface it seems to be an attempt at a balanced look at Pound’s middle years, his life and writing between the time he left London and the start of the Second World War, which he spent mostly in Italy. It is the time in which the first Cantos were written, and in which Pound’s obsession with his peculiar understanding of economics became over whelming. During this time he became a vociferous supporter of Mussolini and Italian Fascism, and increasingly, stridently anti-Semitic in his writings.
But by the end of the book Moody has shown that Pound had become the type of Ideologue he was always criticising, driven by an increasingly delusional belief that his increasingly difficult 'poetry' would save the world from war: that this man who promoted Confucius as the cure for western Society's ills starting with his belief in right naming, was hammering away at a typewriter and sending out his increasingly strident distorted propaganda to increasingly extreme political outlets. He had become incapable of realising that words have effects in the real world, that in the real world people were being done (to misquote Geoffrey Hill) by words. And he was becoming stridently Anti-Semetic and pro hitler. By the end of the book he sounds like someone suffering from megalomania and monomania.
What Moody doesn't investigate is the question that goes begging. Given the lack of intelligence, perception, insight, knowledge or balance.....why is that man worthy of our interest? How is it that a man who manifestly failed in his grandiose schemes, which were never rational or possible in the first place, could retain the interest and sympathy of other people?
What was missing from part one was a sense of Pound as a person. It's even more absent in part two. And this makes it difficult to understand why such a range of intelligent people, who did not share his politics, could be so loyal to him even after the Second World war. Something vital is missing from the biography.
Moody deals honestly with the ugliness of what passes for Pound's political thought, but he's not so willing to deal with criticisms of Pound's poetry. He wants to keep the two things separate. And that seems to be the book's greatest weakness. Reading this book you'd be forgiven for thinking that everyone agrees Pound was brilliant and there isn't a great deal of discussion going on. Moody takes Pound at his own evaluation. As in volume one, he interrupts the narrative to deal with the poems. For the Cantos he relies on paraphrase, though he does attempt the standard explanation of how they cohere.
Since I suspect more people will read this book than have read the poems, they may well find Moody's synopsis of the Cantos far more interesting than the Cantos. Though anyone who has read them might be baffled by a comment like: “Evidently it is necessary to possess or to be willing to acquire a little historical knowledge.” P166 which is an example of cosmic understatement. What does become obvious is how private the cantos are. As Randall Jarrell wrote in the 1950s, if you knew everything Ezra Pound knew, and had read and remembered everything Pound had, and you believed in everything he did, then the Cantos might make sense.
Moody stops at the point where his evidence takes him and refuses to consider its implications. It is this way in which the book seems to be travelling to a conclusion while the writer goes the other way which makes it so perversely enjoyable to read. There is a surface reasonableness to the prose which I think hides the lack of real discernment in the book.
Enjoyable, easy to read, but at the same time not a good biography.
May 22, 2021
Pound would say there a better things to read to understand a poet than biographies most notably the poet's poetry: He is right, this worked as a nice break from rereading Pound for me but that's pretty much all it offered. It was good for it's study of the canto's even though there a better. But it gave me a unique perspective of the poet which is really all I wanted from this book.
April 12, 2023
Now this is epic. (Better than vol.1)
March 13, 2015
OK, I know. He was labeled a traitor after WWII. He was a very bad boy. But, I really feel he was totally insane during his Mussolini period. He rambled on the radio and cantored senseless phrases tot he world. However, like any other maniac, when it came to the centered craft of writing poetry, he was a genius. Cantos, those fragmented, literary, mythological observances, to me, are the pinnacle of 20th century poetry. I always laughed at this story: just after WWII, Congress started The Bollinger Prize for poetry. The award: $1000. For some karmic reason, Pound won the award, for his Pisan Cantos, written when he was imprisoned for this traitorous radio speeches. So, crazy Congress christened him a traitor, then gave him an award for his poetry in the same year. Some things have not changed. Anyway, this is a very helpful book to understand all those Cantos, which, without some background, are just lush words which float among the galaxies. The author did extensive research and I appreciate it!!! I also read Volume One, which ended with his success in London. Five stars to that also!!!
November 25, 2014
The second instalment in a major new 3-part biography of Ezra Pound, this is not a book for the casual reader. Meticulously researched, it is a thorough and detailed account of Pound’s life and work from 1921 to the outbreak of war. With critical examination and analysis of the poetry and music, the book is required reading for Pound scholars, and is both authoritative and well documented. However, it is not inaccessible to the general reader, such as myself, and although I admit to skipping some of the poetry analysis I found the biographical parts extremely interesting and enlightening, and overall enjoyed the book very much.
Read
March 2, 2016Not as good as the first but very informative. Learned a lot about WWII, economics, Mussolini's Fascism (good) vs. Hitler's distortion of fascism (bad). Ezra's incarceration in asylum mirrors Roky Erickson's (never plead insanity is the lesson here).
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews