Ezra Pound: Poems Selected by Thom Gunn

by Thom. (Poems selected by). Gunn, Thomas Gunn

The response of one writer to the work of another can be doubly illuminating. In this series, a contemporary poet advocates a poet of the past or present whom they have particularly admired. By their selection of verses and by the personal and critical reactions they express, the selectors offer intriguing insight into their own work, as well as providing an introduction to some of the most influential poets of our time.

Ezra Pound was born in 1885 in Hailey, Idaho. He came to Europe in 1908 and settled in London, where he became a central figure in the literary and artistic world, befriended by Yeats and a supporter of Eliot and Joyce, among others. In 1920 he moved to Paris, and later to Rapallo in Italy. During the Second World War he made a series of propagandist broadcasts over Radio Rome, for which he was later tried in the United States and subsequently committed to a hospital for the insane. After thirteen years, he was released and returned to Italy, dying in Venice in 1972.

Thom Gunn was born in 1929 and educated at Cambridge University. He had his first collection of poems, Fighting Terms, published while still an undergraduate. He moved to North California in 1954 and has lived there ever since, teaching in American Universities. His latest collection is Boss Cupid (2000).

Genres: Poetry, American, Classics

97 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1967

Reviews

[Alisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection has 6-7 poems that I enjoyed and responded to--those were wistful and lovely. But many of the poems were too densely packed with classical Greek mythology references that I didn't have knowledge of. The introduction was very interesting and helpful in giving context to the poems.

[✥ Simy · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were poems in here that I adored! But it slugged towards the end and didn’t maintain the high energy I was hoping for. I will b reading Klara and the sun next, and I’m hoping to finish lovely bones soon too (then I will read metamorphosis)

[Dean Schabner · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a good place to start to get a sense of the range of Pound's poetry.

[jacmaz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Le plus grand poète américain (avec sylvia plath et ginsberg)

[Brendan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rating: Soft 3. 2 1/2 for me, but with an admission that I have intellectual limitations.

Informative intro from Thom Gunn. Then the poems are placed chronologically, from 1908 to 1970. I don't care much for the early pieces: 1908 - 1912. The poems from Lustra and Cathay, both published in 1915, are a bit better. The selections from Homage to Sextus Propertius (1919) and the selected Cantos (ranging from 1925 to 1970) didn't do it for me.

The stand-out pieces:

[epigraph to Lustra] - four lines
"Liu Ch'e" - six lines
"In a Station of the Metro" - two lines
"The Jewel Stairs' Grievance" - four lines

I don't know if their brevity is a coincidence, or if he was just better at shorter poems. There are plenty of longer pieces in this collection.



Pound believed that literature was news that stays news - Gunn

Dawn enters with little feet
like a gilded Pavlova - Pound, "The Garret"

[Thom Beckett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although Pound's probably not a man you'd wanted to have met when he was alive, what with his support of Mussolini and rampant anti-semitism and such, he's certainly an interesting man.

This collection is a glimpse into a body of work so broad and often obscurantist to the point of being unintelligable, and it's not a bad one. You have to start somewhere, and this is as good a place as any.

A man who can influence the poetry of both Eliot and Bukowski must have been doing something right.

[Brian Wilson · Rating 2 out of 5]

There were a few nice poems at the start, but after a while I got so confused that I lost interest fast. I'm primarily a fan of prose, so I guess Pound is just one of those poets that doesn't do much for me.

[Samuel Flax · Rating 3 out of 5]

There has to be a better collection out there. His first twenty pages are magical, everything I expected Pound to be, but it gets into anachronistic Japanese pieces and middle-European canto excerpts and I lost interest.

[Damon · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not relevant. This collection of boring poems did nothing for me. I imagine that it would be easier to chuckle through if this were written more recently by someone I know about things that are happening now.

[Hugh Treharne]

Feel pretty stupid after reading some of these poems