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The Cantos #110-117
Drafts and Fragments of Cantos CX-CXVII
Poetry, Literary Studies
- GenresPoetry
32 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1967
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About the author
Ezra Pound
609 books1,003 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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July 21, 2017
A beautiful variant of the standard edition of the end of The Cantos and amongst the most lyrical sections of the poem, given over to the Noh moon instead of the divine light planned in 1910 or so. Numbered edition of 310, hand printed by K. K. Marker on Umbria paper at Stone Wall Press in Iowa City, bound in cloth boards with a paper label on the spine, in paper-covered slip case, 200 copies for New Directions, 100 for Faber & Faber, 10 for Stone Wall. All are signed by Pound (not Edmund Dulac's 'chop' EP ordinarily used to 'sign' books) on the limitation page. As is not uncommon with Pound titles the publication date is off. Printing was delayed into 1969. Folio, 12"-15". Gallup A91c.
Displaying 1 of 1 review