Exultations

by Ezra Pound

[Exultations, 1909, POUND] The best of Ezra Pound's early work. Includes Night Litany, Fair Helena, Francesca, Aux Belles de Londres, Greek Epigram, Plotinus, A Song of the Virgin Mother, Histrion, The Eyes, Songs, Defiance, Laudantes Decem, On His Own Face in a Glass, Sestina For Ysolt, Ballad of the Goodly Fere, Portrait, Sandalpphion, Guido Invites You Thus, Pierre Vidal Old and others.

:::

[...]
Lo, I have seen thee bound about with dreams,
Lo, I have known thy heart and its desire;
Life, all of it, my sea, and all men's streams
Are fused in it as flames of an altar fre I
Lo, thou hast voyaged not! The ship is mine.

Genres: Poetry, Fiction

64 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1909

About the author

Ezra 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.

Reviews

[R.L. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very enjoyable! I found this a good bit easier to read than Personae; several poems stood out to me—Sestina for Ysolt, The Goodly Fere, Planh for the Young English King...there are more.

Pound references the divine quite frequently in this book, which puzzles me a bit given that he doesn't appear to have been devoutly religious; nevertheless, as in The Goodly Fere, there's a tone of belief frequently attached. Perhaps he used Biblical language and imagery in the same way that he appears to have used mythological material—to establish emotional context for what he wanted to say; but I found it interesting for all that.

Numerous motifs and images are repeated throughout, as are the themes of exploration, love, and sorrow. At times I personally found the repetition a bit heavy handed and not so striking as I had hoped, but all the same I will certainly be revisiting this collection.

(Content caution: some profane language.)

[Neha · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection has my favorite poem of all time, “Francesca,” and introduced me to some new beautiful poetry, as well! But a lot of these poems I just didn’t understand, and the lyricism wasn’t enough to satisfy me.

“Red leaf that art blown upward and out and over The green sheaf of the world,
And through the dim forest and under
The shadowed arches and the aisles,
We, who are older than thou art,
Met and remembered when his eyes beheld her In the garden of the peach-trees,
In the day of the blossoming.”

[danielle; ▵ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not my cuppa

[Sameen Shakya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ezra Pound is my favorite poet. Last year, I decided to read all his poetry collections in a chronological order and this, Exultations, is his fourth.

The poems in this book can be classed as his minor works but they carry the power that made Pound such a joy to read. The poems desire more than show but any great poet will tell you, any great artist will tell you, that wanting to be great is the first step to greatness.

[André Balaio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ler estes poemas no original - vários com expressões do Inglês arcaico - foi uma tarefa hercúlea. Embora alguma coisa tenha se perdido, o que consegui captar compensou e me propiciou um raro deleite.