The Cantos

The Cantos

by Ezra Pound

Delmore Schwartz said about The Cantos : "They are one of the touchstones of modern poetry." William Carlos WIlliams said "[Pound] discloses history by its odor, by the feel of it—in the words; fuses it with the words, present and past, to MAKE his Cantos . Make them."



Since the 1969 revised edition, the Italian Cantos LXXII and LXXIII (as well as a 1966 fragment concluding the work) have been added. Now appearing for the first time is Pound's recently found Eglish translation of Italian Canto LXXII.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Literature, Fiction, American, 20th Century, The United States Of America

803 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1970

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

[Brian Michels · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this one on the train on my way home from work today - NOT!

Three decades ago I picked it up, finished nearly half, then was overwhelmed with his words and the strife of my then life.

Two decades ago I picked it up and nearly finished the thing until others' words got in the way of his words and I had to use my own words to defend against said words and got lost in the sway.

Rhythm, always rhythm.

One day ago I finished it, complete, replete and without any sleep, yet strength enough to keep myself together. Awe, infamy, like the tides of mantle, pits without bottoms, sailing with waxed hulls, moved, irrefutable, unmistakable, confused, and understood as only in a song with soft and pretty lines. The kind we all love or hate. Make no mistake. Howl and scowl, the monstrous face of evil is at stake. Money. Pray nay, the misuse of money, tis mankind's fray. Masters of debt, usury through and through, they're the ugly ones, not me and you. Pray again, for all their dark deeds, it's their history, may they finally get their do. Hark ye fellow, herald it true. The Cantos, a must read for everyone, in a century, tis great, the one book you must do.

[Peycho Kanev · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the greatest wordsmiths ever. Reading Pound, one feels the weight of civic responsibility. Pound rages at what he sees rending Western Civilization from its roots. He discloses history by mentioning it, using events as metaphors, as expressions, as examples of his points, and in doing this he expects you to know them. Pound's poetry convicts one to read Dante, to read Homer, to read the Troubadours. The Cantos really has no plot. The poem consists of approximately 120 shorter poems (themselves called "cantos," after the sections into which Dante divided each book of his Divine Comedy), some of which tell unified stories and some of which are simply collections of musings, observations, memories, and exhortations. To some extent (in my opinion) to really be able to understand the Cantos you have to strive to become Pound. This is not something the academics are willing to do, and many of them (in my opinion) miss the whole point. To become Pound means allowing yourself to become accept a certain sort of craziness. Putting aside questions of identifiable mental illness, there is a way in which Pound, in the Cantos, is often just not in touch with rationality as we ordinarily understand it. This is the craziness of someone who sees something that other people don't see (which is not in itself crazy) and who expects that other people will also see it if he just shows it to them. Like I said one of the greatest wordsmiths. Ever.

[Geoff]

Though Pound's Cantos are going onto the "to-poke-at-with-a-stick" shelf, I have actually read a number of the poems over the past few months, and some of them are staggeringly stunningly wind-and-sea-and-stone-coast-wrought Hellenic dreambeauties. These from the first 15th or so of the book that I have breached. Then some are incomprehensible limbos. Gass's essay on Pound in "Finding A Form", where he spends the first two pages deconstructing the Fate hidden in his name and the rest chalking up his failures and successes by degrees, is well worth a good reader's time. The Cantos linger on my shelf (it's a gorgeous stark New Directions); sometimes I find them open in my palms and I don't know how they got there; often they achieve that place that rare poetry does, where you feel like it's actually the voices of Time, Mind, and Earth; at other instances you feel that you're having the golden fleece pulled over your eyes; still, I am intrigued- fascism and mental instability are intriguing, among many other things- when poetry is added into the mix, we're just all ambiguously rattling the chains of HISTORY and the voice through which it sometimes speaks clatters clatters.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Yet what need to say? ’Tis as human a little story as paper could well carry, in affect, as singsing so Salaman susuing to swittvitles while as unbluffingly blurtubruskblunt as an Esra? the cat, the cat’s meeter, the meeter’s cat’s wife, the meeter’s cat’s wife’s half better, the meeter’s cat’s wife’s half better’s meeter, and so back to our horses, for we also know, what we have perused from the pages of I Was A Gemral, that Showting up of Bulsklivism by ‘Schottenboum’, that Father Michael about this red time of the white terror equals the old regime and Margaret is the social revolution while cakes mean the party funds and dear thank you signifies national gratitude. In fine, we have heard, as it happened, of Spartacus intercellular. We are not corknered yet, dead hand! We can recall, with voluntears, the froggy jew, and sweeter far ’twere now westhinks in Dumbil’s fair city ere one more year is o’er. We tourned our coasts to the good gay tunes. When from down swords the sea merged the oldowth guns and answer made the bold O’ Dwyer. But. Est modest in verbos. Let a prostitute be whoso stands before a door and winks or parks herself in the fornix near a makeussin wall (sinsin! sinsin!) and the curate one who brings strong waters (gingin! gingin!), but also, and dinna forget, that there is many asleeps between someathome’s first and moreinausland’s last and that the beautiful presence of waiting kates will until life’s (!) be more than enough to make any milkmike in the language of sweet tarts punch hell’s hate into his twin nicky and that Maggy’s tea, or your majesty, if heard as a boost from a born gentleman is (?). For if the lingo gasped between kicksheets, however basically English, were to be preached from the mouths of wickerchurchwardens and metaphysicians in the row and advokaatoes, allvoyous, demivoyelles, languoaths, lesbiels, dentelles, gutterhowls and furtz, where would their practice be or where the human race itself were the Pythagorean sesquipedalia of the panepistemion, however apically Volapucky, grunted and gromwelled, ichabod, habakuk, opanoff, uggamyg, hapaxle, gomenon, ppppfff, over country stiles, behind slated dwellinghouses, down blind lanes, or, when all fruit fails, under some sacking left on a coarse cart?

So hath been, love: tis tis: and will be: till wears and tears and ages. Thief us the night, steal we the air, shawl thiner liefest, mine! Here, Ohere, insult the fair! Traitor, bad hearer, brave! The lightning look, the birding cry, awe from the grave, ever-flowing on the times. Feueragusaria iordenwater; now godsun shine on menday’s daughter; a good clap, a fore marriage, a bad wake, tell hell’s well; such is manowife’s lot of lose and win again, like he’s gruen quhiskers on who’s chin again, she plucketed them out but they grown in again. So what are you going to do about it? O dear!"

JOYce - Funnigans Wake - Book Won.

[and not just because of Ezra/Esra/Arse/Erase/Usury but because passages such as this contain everything lacking in the Cannots - they are just so darn Po-faced. So self-aggrandising. So, well, unpleasant, much of the time. Diving into the Wake was pleasure, the Cantos often felt like Work. Tracing through all the allusions and quotations often ended up resulting in a simple "hmm, so what?". This is not to say there is not some extraordinary writing here - about 15 or so of the Cantos, as well as bits and bobs scattered around, surely rank with some of the greatest poetry of the 20thc. BUT....When reading secondary material is more enjoyable than reading the text itself, you know there is a problem...I am ready to admit the problem may be me rather than the work, but i'm not sure I care at this point. Pound for me will always be, in descending order: a genius promoter; a great editor; an excellent and inventive translator; and a poet of wildly variable quality]

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is difficult to estimate the totality of effect of Pound's having been. We can say this much. Without Pound there is no Williams, no Olson, no Zukofsky--to name only the most obvious suspects. But we might as well say that without Pound there is no Joyce, no Eliot. Lewis is, natheless, as the tree, having never been (nor yet is he to be) seen as much, if seen. Gaudier? Forget it. Antheil? Well, yes, but to what extent? Thus, and as simply, may we owe the finer and distinct shapes of poetry, prose, painting, sculpture, and music--each, when working, interpenetrating its neighbor--to Pound's having been--and operatively, done. Kenner's "Pound Era" is a good start toward understanding the abovementioned effect; Davenport's "Ithaka" a signpost with headway. The rest is in the music.




I suppose I have read some 20 books by or about Pound. At that, I am just closer to understanding what he was up to.

[Ulysse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Centotré

There was an old poet called Pound
Whose mind was not always so sound
He wrote poems in Chinese
Kissed il Duce on the knees
And bared his sharp teeth like a hound

A sinistra... / A destra...


.

[B. P. Rinehart · Rating 5 out of 5]

"And If you say that this tale teaches...
a lesson, or that the Reverend Eliot
has found a more natural language...you who think
you will
get through hell in a hurry..." - opening lines of Canto XLVI

You will not find a better summary of all that modernist poetry had to offer than Ezra Pound's decades long collection of poetry, written with The Divine Comedy in mind, that he simply called The Cantos. It is one of the most voluminous, complex, ambitious, and extreme works of literature ever released. If you ever need to read one of Ezra Pound's writings to understand what he was about and how his understanding of life played out through his career life these cantos are all you need.

"Knowledge the shade of a shade,
Yet must thou sail after knowledge
Knowing less than drugged beasts." - from Canto XLVII

Ezra Pound was a main-stay in modernist/American/European literature for decades. He would become extremely controversial for his anti-semitic, pro-Mussolini views and would spend his long post-WWII life in seclusion in Italy after being released from US custody for assisting Mussolini during the war (he was diagnosed as having advanced bi-polar disorder). Despite this, he is given credit as having helped and counseled numerous writers over the course of his life. And such authors like Eliot, Joyce, Hughes (Langston), Woolf, H.D., Carlos Williams and Ginsberg, to name a few, would correspond with him over his life to debate, get support, and advice from him.

"Never idle, by no means by no wiles intermittent
Moth is called over mountain
The bull runs blind on the sword, naturans
To the cave art thou called, Odysseus,
By Molü hast thou respite for a little,
By Molü art thou freed from the one bed
that thou may'st return to another
The stars are not in her counting,
To her they are but wandering holes." - from Canto XLVII

Try as I might, I find it nearly impossible to give a simple summary of The Cantos itself. These cantos are filled with Chinese and Japanese characters and make references to the Noh plays of Japan as well as a section of cantos on Chinese history. It is a book or collection that grapples with world history through culture, economics, and general governance. So many figures are referenced or made focal points of full sections such as: John Adams, Confucius, Pietro Leopoldo, Edward Coke, and the poetry of Homer and T.S. Eliot are among many that show up. His blending of history and economics as to be singled out for distinction. Only the antisemitism (that appears during "The Pisan Cantos" onwards) and praise of Italian fascism prevent this work from being perfect. You could argue that his worsening untreated bi-polar disorder was not helping but still...not cool.

I would be remiss not to comment on one of the few central themes flowing throughout The Cantos, his hatred of usury. As defined in the edition of The Cantos that I have in front of me, usury is a charge for the use of purchasing power without regard to production; often without the regard to the possibilities of production. This hatred of usury leads to one of the most famous canto from this collection and which Pound felt essential to understanding these poems: Canto XLV "With Usura".

" With usura hath no man a house of good stone
each block cut smooth and well fitting
that design might cover their face,
with usura
hath no man a painted paradise on his church wall
harpes et luz
or where virgin receiveth message
and halo projects from incision,
with usura
seeth no man Gonzaga his heirs and his concubines
no picture is made to endure nor to live with
but it is made to sell and sell quickly
with usura, sin against nature,
is thy bread ever more of stale rags
is thy bread dry as paper,
with no mountain wheat, no strong flour
with usura the line grows thick
with usura is no clear demarcation
and no man can find site for his dwelling.
Stonecutter is kept from his tone
weaver is kept from his loom
WITH USURA
wool comes not to market
sheep bringeth no gain with usura
Usura is a murrain, usura
blunteth the needle in the maid’s hand
and stoppeth the spinner’s cunning. Pietro Lombardo
came not by usura
Duccio came not by usura
nor Pier della Francesca; Zuan Bellin’ not by usura
nor was ‘La Calunnia’ painted.
Came not by usura Angelico; came not Ambrogio Praedis,
Came no church of cut stone signed: Adamo me fecit.
Not by usura St. Trophime
Not by usura Saint Hilaire,
Usura rusteth the chisel
It rusteth the craft and the craftsman
It gnaweth the thread in the loom
None learneth to weave gold in her pattern;
Azure hath a canker by usura; cramoisi is unbroidered
Emerald findeth no Memling
Usura slayeth the child in the womb
It stayeth the young man’s courting
It hath brought palsey to bed, lyeth
between the young bride and her bridegroom
CONTRA NATURAM
They have brought whores for Eleusis
Corpses are set to banquet
at behest of usura."

This is not a book to be read by a novice or someone unfamiliar to modernist literature as it is way more complex than what you will get from T.S. Eliot. I will say that if you like an adventure and like to be challenged intellectually, as I do, this book will give keep you busy and make you think, whether you agree with Pound or not (I find myself doing both at certain points).

[Dennis · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ugh, if I could provide a rating of negative stars, this would be the one. Perhaps I'll finish it one day. In my death-bed senility I'll turn the last page and hauntingly tell that terrible grandchild, the one that's always torturing the cat or something, "Promise me one day you'll read this, it's a classic." I call this move the Reverse Rosebud. I'm spiteful like that; I've just committed to too many pages at this point.

I'm no great critic of poetry. I try not to overanalyze what I read that calls itself poetry. A lot of the nuance of meter and structure and word choice, etc goes past me I'm sure, so take this review with grain of salt. But the elements that do please me, such as the sounds of the words, the interesting images, clever turns of phrase, a curious point of view, maybe even just the pattern of the ink on the page...not here. I hardly found any of that in these murky waters.

With its collage of confusing references to usury, Jews, the Medicis and the Italian banking system, the American Founding Fathers, the I Ching, poorly transcribed Chinese characters, the name dropping from The Western Canon, lines borrowed from the Greek and Latin and French and Italian and Spanish and the cutting and pasting of centuries-old financial correspondence(?), yadda, yadda, enough already. I just find this kind of literary obscurantism masturbatory. And I start to wonder if the hostility that I feel here is stemming from my own bewilderment & boredom or from the ghost of Ezra Pound himself, towards the world around him, expressed as a paranoiac fever dream where all the subjects he half-studied in his life come together in a meaningless, drooling riddle.

In other words: if a canto is a song, then this album sucks.

[Wesley Blixt · Rating 5 out of 5]

You want to reject Pound, as you want to reject Celine, for his politics, and for his role in the tragedy of the 20th century. But his is voice that gets inside you head and won't got way, and his incantations make your liver quiver. And you realize that there really is no Eliot or Hemingway or Williams or Ginsberg without him. No Beats. No Funk. And besides, the greatest tragedy he presided over was his own. Winter is icumin in, lude sing goddam . . .

[Jonfaith · Rating 3 out of 5]

All of which leads to the death-cells
each in the name of its god
or longevity because as says Aristotle
philosophy is not for young men

Over five stars for the Pisan Cantos, but only between two and three for the rest, except for the final pages where lyricism not economic symbolism was the prevailing wisdom. Early on a certain rhythm was established , civilization stabilizes in fits and starts but it only expands through credit, through usury and a certain population not only benefits but begins to dictate the course of such expansion.

Shines
in the mind of heaven God
who made it
more than the sun
in our eye.

Reading and reckoning with The Cantos was an immersive experience, aided essentially with online annotation and other secondary resources. My awe was infrequent as my suspicions murmured of dark augers. I wanted bassoons and valises, but instead there were political ledgers and overtures to Edward Coke. Occasionally exhilarating it was often laborious: a cagy climb with requisite declensions. Undoubtedly, I enjoyed this more than Maximus Poems Iam not sure if that's an adequate recommendation.

[Steve]

I figured there was no better time than now to read The Cantos from the man Eliot named il miglior fabbro. Maybe Mr. Pound can tell me more about Madame Sosostris, the famous clairvoyant? But what did I just finish? Was Mr. Pound madman, genius or both? An immense swirl of world history, evoking both eras long past and present, distilled through one man, combined with social criticism, is my answer – think of a work on the order of The Waste Land multiplied by more than one hundred. Mr. Pound pulled from such a wide range of culturally significant threads that any cognoscente should fail this test. He includes substantial references in Greek, Latin, Chinese, Italian, French, Spanish and German, most obscure, if not entirely indecipherable to me. Needless to say, at best I saw the shadows cast within this work, understanding the foundations that produced those shadows proved beyond my ability, though I did catch onto general themes involving the continuity of civilization across time and place, government misrule, usury, and homages to great figures in the arts, especially Mr. Pound’s friends like Possum. Unfortunately, I learned nothing further about the famous clairvoyant.

We are all familiar with this writing style from our high school yearbooks. “Suzeeee on the trip with Peeeeetie – wawawawawa!” Leaving future readers to wonder about this Susan and Peter, an item since sophomore year, the meaning of this trip, and what might have happened along the way, if the reference to a real trip is even correct. Maybe they experienced another kind of trip? This is insider stuff and we likely are either in the know or we’re never going to know. And so is Mr. Pound’s writing, except on a monumental scale spanning all written history rather than the less impressive personal journeys of our former teenage classmates. Despite his occasionally erroneous economic and political beliefs and the racist jibes that infrequently arise, there is no denying Mr. Pound put his arms around something grand, something perhaps only he understood in total and that few gifted writers could possibly rival. I can hear my mom’s midwestern voice, “Well he was different, wasn’t he?”

[Marmott79 · Rating 5 out of 5]

È la cosa più bella che mi sia mai capitata da leggere.
Emana un potere magnetico per cui, anche quando il libro è chiuso, non puoi fare a meno di pensare ai Cantos.
... E sono solo al quindicesimo...

31.01.2021
Sono giunta al trentesimo canto e confermo il magnetismo della poesia di Pound (e io non amo la poesia).
Da quando ho iniziato, a gennaio 2020, mi sono dovuta mettere in pari con la cultura dell'autore e mi ha convinta a rileggere Iliade e Odissea, mi ha fatto leggere l'Agamennone di Eschilo e quello di Seneca (ma di questo non ne parla), inoltre ho ripreso in mano la Divina Commedia di Dante e non escludo di rileggere anche l'Eneide.
Che dire? È un libro che fa leggere 😂

31.01.2022
Giunta al termine dei China Cantos (LXI), diciamo che non sono la parte più divertente ma si leggono come prosa e riprendono i temi principali cari a Ezra inquadrandoli tutti nella storia cinese. Può essere considerato un lungo esempio. Da prendere come parte riposante, diciamo, i canti Leopoldini che precedono sono sicuramente più belli e il XLIX è meravigliosamente imagista.
Gli Adam Cantos saranno sicuramente una palla disumana, speriamo bene

[anton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Soul-Geometer
find the Point-Remain.
ingest of that aire acumulate
HARBORED at that space-worlde
find the/the point-remain point. still. stands.
I was a former Longer unadorned,
any longer and my form would—

the knit quilt de ontos no se ? —Calliope

come to me and give me what I want . . .
Salaetia was it, bellowed from the Shroud incarnatine
ensaturnine
mellow droplet
hyperboloid
asperare-μορφή
SALIREFORGED that olive-canvas [to th/] matrix [o/th/] willed-beyond
every-vector-henceforth-packed-as-Sphere-as-in-worldspace-
—optima-aethyreasia

that knee to ground is grace to mind in Lord of rain/
fall
PLEASE . . .
PATTERN-ME AS RAIN IS OF THE SURFACES
artifice—
artiphantasma
-goria
correcorrecorrecorrecorre
to the hilt-sheath de mi alma-anima
feel your teeth scrape on the skin of that leaf,
pleased

enonwards Beautithesis froward trayments infint divineportraiture
hollowed-out Tempi of the Inchoate / tattered impartialities of the Nil
avoidbeing

[Sir Jack · Rating 1 out of 5]

I think The Cantos is a disaster. Maybe you could justify this mess by citing it as an early example of “found poetry” (i.e., large chunks of it is stuff that Pound cribbed directly from primary sources, but he chopped the lines to make it look like poetry). I confess: I didn’t make it past Canto 28. There is some beautiful writing, but at a ratio of about three lines per five cantos. So it was difficult mathematically to justify carrying on in the face of this deluge of obscurantism.

There is something senile about its organization. Cantos-loving critics anxiously piece together some letters he wrote to so-and-so as evidence that The Cantos is “majestically” organized (it’s usually pretentiously explained like a math equation: AA = BB + CBC =AA, or something). And these private letters were written way before the whole poem was even close to being finished.

“Tin flash in the sun dazzle.” Excellent description of sun off water used in a couple of The Cantos, for example. Also check out Canto III (I think), which is a mind-bending description of the young Dionysius transforming a boat into a sea creature (or something, it’s been some months since I’ve read this; not 100% sure either that it’s Canto III but it’s somewhere near the beginning).

And some of the imagery, like in Canto II or XVI for example, is just stunning and might make some of you feel that reading through this thing (with an immense companion!) is actually worthwhile.

[Deni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mi cariño y admiración por Pound es tal que no creo poder decir mucho. Esta tarea de vida es un testimonio de lo que puede hacerse cuando se tiene una devoción impostergable por todo lo que atañe a la vida, la historia, la naturaleza, la cultura humana, sus diversas lenguas y, consecuentemente, por la literatura. Los Cantos no son más que una praxis, el intento absoluto. Sin duda en mi panteón <3

[Asha Kodah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Took me about a year and a half, on and off, to read, many sections multiple times, but damn this was brilliant.

[Jacob Hurley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vile. I denounce every page of this disgusting "book"

[Christan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Difficult, difficult read. It is also a work of genius. Demented genius at that. Imagine Pound living in an steel cage, writing under the glare of floodlights and open hostility. Certainly not a nice man, but also not an animal. There is no Emily Dickinson to be found here...

[TinHouseBooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Miles Jochem (Editorial Intern, Tin House Books): You know you’re in for a doozy when the most famous literary appraisal of a book ends with the warning, “There are the Alps, / fools! Sit down and wait for them to crumble.” These lines, written by Basil Bunting, are about Ezra Pound’s Cantos, one of the pillars of Modernism. Pound ranks among the most controversial of writers, not least due to his open sympathy for anti-Semitic fascists. In fact, the US government charged him with treason in 1945 and he spent years in captivity, first in an outdoor cage in Italy, then in an insane asylum in the States. But if we judged writers by their personal failings there wouldn’t be much left of the literary canon. The book itself is a behemoth – 120-odd sections comprising a modern epic in the tradition of Dante, but borrowing material from countless sources spanning global recorded history. You need help with this, unless you are a polyglot with an encyclopedic knowledge of economic, political, and literary history (not me). For example, the first canto is Pound’s translation of a 16th century Latin translation of part of Homer’s Odyssey, written in Pound’s take on ancient Anglo-Saxon poetic meter. Confused yet? I still am, but William Cookson’s excellent guide to the poem is helping me limp, slowly, through the dark forest of Modernist pretention. I’m still in the beginning cantos, but with any luck I will catch a glimpse of what the poet himself described as “the marrow of wisdom” contained within the words.

[DoctorM · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant, maddening, exhausting--- but one of the masterpieces of modern lit. There are sections that thrill the heart to read aloud and cantos that drive you into a fury with obscurantism and posturing. Every time the word "usura" comes up (a fortiori when it's a personified Usura) you remember Pound's lunatic politics and his support of Mussolini and Hitler's invasion of Russia. And certainly the madness of Pound's later years is just waiting here. But these poems are great powerful thundering intricate oddly delicate and sensitive things--- impossible to sum up, really. Get a copy and just...leap into the reading.

[Jorge Yacoman · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s a very dense and complex book. Not the traditional poetry. I think it reflects the struggle of people to achieve dignity and how people have lost themselves to greed or vanity, how the weakest have been stomped, used and traded with all the lies, secrets, bureaucracy and manipulation from the powerful people. I think the use of Chinese, Greek, Latin, German, French, Spanish and other languages serve to show the universality of these voices that throughout history have threaded the world we know today. I felt the last unfinished Cantos show Pound’s most human side and struggle and help understand how he built his Cantos.

[Lee Foust · Rating 5 out of 5]

You'll have to read this from the bottom up to get my chronological reactions to the poems and secteions as I read--enjoy!


P.S. Oh, and I wrote a little poem of my own after I finished:

A rube-ish college dropout
From I’d I’d I’d… Idahoey
After reading lotsa books
‘bout Sigismundo, ‘bout Leopoldo, ‘bout Chinesee
Histor-easy (written by crafty Jesuiti)
‘bout Adams pere and fille,
Determines Jews
Are the problem. Eschews banks
And decides a fat, fascist dictator will drain the swamp
But that dang Red Roosevelt, and that darned boob Churchilly
Done hanged him by the heels. Oh, woe is he!
I told ya I told ya I told ya!
(With a little cribbin’, and a little ribbon, and some nature imagery.)

What did William Carlos Williams say?
Something about the Great American Tradition
Of missing the whole point?



May 25, 2017 - page 822
100% "These final fragments are touchingly feeble. Attempts to write the peaceful and the beautiful in which Pound only half-heatedly believes. He cannot complete the imitation of The Commedia because his world is too fragmentary, too full of intolerance, the forces of history and citation. He's read too much to believe, really, in his own attempts at a universal vision it seems. He is human. He asks for forgiveness. I grant it. The work is astounding, heinous (even here he apologizes again for the fat fuck who destroyed half of Italy), almost always beautiful in its struggle to reconstruct a world adjusted again and again through indignation. Indignation is not enough apperently. Write over the palimpsest. start again. fail again. fail better
What remains is the voice of struggle, of contradiction, opposition, ultimately anger. Like Plato he believes to the end that all sin is mere stupidity--and he could not stand what he saw as stupidity."

May 23, 2017 – page 794
96.59% "'Thrones' I Enjoyed this part a bit more than the 'Rock Drill.' The poems seemed slightly more pointed, digestible, more thought-out/thoughtful than the occasional random casting about of some earlier near epic lyrics. Maybe only because many were shorted. Still. An acceptable summation of much of what came before. Well, on to the final fragments."

May 21, 2017 – page 713
86.74% "I found canto XCVIII particularly clear and beautiful--as I understand the poem now, philosophy and sociology in verse. One still wonders how all this learning led the poet to the buffoon Mussolini and racism as a governmental creed. Perhaps 'order' (and its requisite Chinese character) are the key. The character looks, to me, like 2 human beings divided by a slash, the one on top leaning on and crushing the other."

May 17, 2017 – page 670
81.51% "Rock Drill: lotsa hokey mysticism, random racial slurs, apologies for dead fascists, and attacks on establishment surrounding literature scholasticism. Despite beauty of many verses I didn't really buy the river of light thing. Under it I sense the broken, burnt bodies of half of Europe thanks to Mussolini's sucking Hitler's dick. Tell me again, Ezra, how much he was like Jefferson? He didn't even rape n...."

May 1, 2017 – page 609
74.09% "You can only learn so much from history as all present situations tend toward new, as yet un-imagined situations. What's the difference? Gold, silver, paper money, words: all of these things are symbolic as is value itself. Any kind of debt is an abuse of trust, a slap in the face of humanity, cooperation, a negation of how this species has so far managed to survive others."

April 30, 2017 – page 583
70.92% "For conservatism hates equality, hates the people, hates the government of the people, hates politics, is institutionalized hate, in the name of love of God and country."

April 30, 2017 – page 569
69.22% "Could one use this poem to diagnose the failure of democracy and its imminent collapse? Is it the uneasy relationship between class-antagonistic capitalism and democracy's credo of equality have done it in? This typical fallacy that "if we just had the right leader..." when the system of a hierarchy of power always betrays equality's ethos? Or that conservatism itself is democracy's self-loathing, its death desire?"

April 28, 2017 – page 553
67.27% "Pisan Cantos: Yes, better--less history, more poetry. He's STILL fucking apologizing for Nazis but, you know, hard to teach an old dog new tricks. Passages of enormous beauty which, given some of the nastier elements of Pound's narcissistic personality, seem almost inadvertent. it speaks through him like the gospel through a perfidious preacher in Augustine's permission for it to do so, the De Doctrina Cristiana."

March 31, 2017 – page 493
59.98% "LXXIX was particularly beautiful, sensual, natural, musical, moving. All hail the goddess!"

March 15, 2017 – page 478
58.15% "LXXVI:
'Nothing matters but the quality
of the affection---
in the end---that has carved the trace in the mind'"

March 13, 2017 – page 466
56.69% "That coward Mussolini abandoned me to this hell of house arrest, oh boo-hoo. The Pisan Cantos begin, full of beauty, self pity, and a racist jab every so often to remind you that the poet is a genial genius gentleman asshole. I want to perform a racismectomy, to cut the rotten spot out of his overburdened brain--there's so much sweet beauty and wisdom swarming around the fetid odor of the shit in his wailing head."

March 11, 2017 – page 437
53.16% "The two Italian Canti. Utterly heinous. I'm almost sorry I can read Italian. What has been read cannot be unread. I can't believe the most heinous thing I've ever read in Italian was written by an American. Idaho. Go Figure."

March 11, 2017 – page 423
51.46% "These, the Adams Cantos, pretty much prove the proposition that neither poetry nor politics have ever done each other any favors. Certainly an improvement on the stultifying repetitions of the Chinese Cantos, still no great shakes. The scope impressive, the music barely comes through the diatribe, the diatribe marginally interesting but, in the present state of the union, not much good to anyone as far as I can tell."

February 19, 2017 – page 341
41.48% "Plus he loves to call people names: Chinks, Japs, Frogs, and Portogoose. The rotten old Idaho spudboy. Do yourself a favor and skip this section--the toc is good enough to get the gist--and there's not much more to it all than a gist."

February 19, 2017 – page 340
41.36% "The Chinese Cantos: So Pound's notes, in verse, to a Jesuit's history of China. Despite the names he makes it sound pretty much like the history of Europe--as a European would. Proves the old adage that "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing." (You might use it to write 100 pp of meaningless verse--some of it pretty, much of it awful, repetitious, pointless.)"

February 17, 2017 – page 275
33.45% "Everything he praises of Chinese rulers in LIII--public works and peace--would appear quite Rooseveltian. Everything he deplores--expansion and needless war--Mussolini. So how in the hell??????????"

February 14, 2017 – page 253
30.78% "So the Leopoldine cantos come to an end. At least when he lost track of music here the poet was often angry enough to still entertain. And there were flashes of great lyricism, most powerfully in the usura canto, which is also angry so a nice marriage there of passion and music. it's hard to give a shit about ol' Leopold, though, or governments' avoiding debt. Poetry, I think, was invented to speak of better things."

February 14, 2017 – page 246
29.93% "XLIX should have been a lesson: an exquisitely beautiful and rhythmic, even melodic poem with one terrible two line stanza--the one about banks. Getting out my red pencil."

February 11, 2017 – page 240
29.2% "XLVII amazing! Go read it now! (Just when I thought I couldn't take any more bourgeois yahoo pseudo-economics and opinionated history lessons.)"

February 11, 2017 – page 231
28.1% "That is to say the first three canti of this section bored me shitless with their utter lack of lyricism or music. I get it. Leopoldo was a good egg. 'nuf said. but the litany against usury is stupendous and thundering. Keep that shit up, Ezra! Let's see how the sequence goes on."

February 11, 2017 – page 229
27.86% "they just went belly-up and are being loaned a few million by the Italian people. We don't even know who owes who anymore. Capitalism and banking has more than failed and yet we persist, pushing the planet to extinction by manufacturing bullshit that's poisoning us. And still the racist are running the world and pushing for war. This is just depressing me. But he's right about usury in general, that's for shit sure."

February 11, 2017 – page 228
27.74% "I remember when I was young and had only read so much and Eliot and Pound wowed me with their mysterious heaviness and erudition. I have to say, now, after 50 years of reading and history and 20 years in Italy their works, at their worst, strike me as series of citations of texts and histories I've already read and lived. I have an account with the Monte dei Paschi di Siena:"

February 9, 2017 – page 208
25.3% "That fat fuck was wearing a goddamned uniform, Ezra, or did you miss that? How could you have been so blind when the truth was right there in front of you, indeed is in about 80% of what you write. The other 20% is embarrassing. You also lost the lyricism big time in a few of these. But the good passages were still sublime. Asshat. You talented, deluded asshat."

February 9, 2017 – page 207
25.18% "Through the XI New Cantos--Good God! These are some of the most schizophrenic texts I've ever read. Vicious and proper attacks on banks and war (what war hasn't been traceable back, ultimately, to a bank, to debt, to someone so desperate to pay someone else back they started killing people to get what they needed) peppered with gross antisemitism and praises of Mussolini."

February 3, 2017 – page 153
18.61% "First volume completed! So much more fulfilling to read the cantos straight through in order rather than singly as I'd always done before--finally catching the scope, the re-occurring themes, phrases, motifs, and topics, as in a novel. I don't always agree, but the artistry! The sheer power of the words to weave this beautiful web! Hweat!"

January 8, 2017 – page 28
3.41% ""And the old voice lifts itself
Weaving an endless silence.""

January 8, 2017 – page 21
2.55% "Think I'm finally old and studied enough to understand about half of what Pound's up to. Bring it on!"

[Kyle Muntz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably the most ambitious work of poetry ever, and interesting for so many reasons. Sections of this book are incredibly beautiful, timeless, and untouchable, paired with a bunch of fascinating intellectual moves and an attempt to bring together the history and mythology of everything, ever, in a single poetic work. Unfortunately, huge chunks (probably most of the book) are terrible, with a special mention going to a chunk near the center where Pound basically just lineates John Adam's letters for 100 pages. The failure of the book is important, and makes it more fascinating even if it doesn't make it good; for me the best poems were near the beginning, which makes me think I should probably read some of Pound's pure imagist poetry eventually.

The formal patterns and evolution of the text are always amazing, even when they aren't good to read. We see the text leave the side of the page and (to a certain extent) the English language, pausing to narrate an imaginary history of China for 100 pages, and ultimately covering almost the whole range of experimental 20th century poetics. Some elements bothered me more than others though, especially Pound's absurdly intense focus on banking and usury, because they reoccurred so often throughout the whole thing.

For the most part, I'd only suggest maybe the first 100 pages of this book, but it was an interesting ride and worth four stars, even if for me a lot of the goodness was off the page.

[Keith · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well. The Cantos. Where to start with this large, sprawling, infuriatingly obscurantist work?

Let’s start with the most immediate question to me: What is Pound’s expectation of the reader? (I assume there is some kind of expectation – or some kind of reader.) It features multiple language – Latin, Italian, Spanish, French and smatterings of Greek and Chinese. (Alas it has very little German, which is on the one foreign language I’m somewhat familiar with.)

It is rife with historical characters, writers, painters, philosophers and poets that come and go in a dizzy parade. (Canto V alone names more than 25 different people – and references many others without a name.) People and gods small and large bubble up throughout the work, and only a small number surface more than once.

So is the reader supposed to have a working knowledge of all the Romance languages – ancient and contemporary – plus Greek and Chinese? Is the reader supposed to have an encyclopedic knowledge of four thousand years of Greek and European history? If a reader does not possess that knowledge, is there any point in reading The Cantos?

Artists have an expectation of their audience – whether conscious or not. Is it realistic to demand that someone sit through a five-hour play? Read a 12,000-page book? (Before anyone writes in – yes, I’m sure you can name a five-hour play or a 12,000-page book. How often are those read/performed?) When you are using quotes and allusions, how refined can you get?

Short of creating his own language, Pound takes allusion and reference as far as he can in some sections. As a result, much of the work is more like a notebook – a shorthand reference to a litany of other works and historical figures. It is the sketch of a poem that was never written.

Of course, perhaps Pound thought that the less-than-genius need not apply. Well, let’s give it try anyway.

Here are my thoughts on the cantos as I finish them:

Cantos I & II – These are ostensively translations from the Odyssey and the Metamorphoses, respectively. The theme of talking to the dead – i.e., history – is presented, as well as the danger of beauty. Transformation is also an important re-occurring idea. The translations are in Pound’s inimical style, by which I mean they are more artistic interpretations than literal renderings. If you know the basic stories, you can follow what’s happening. If you don’t, you won’t. (9/14)

Cantos III-VI – The allusions/references come furiously in these Cantos. I eventually gave up trying to track them. Canto V, about 126 lines, references the names of more than 25 different people – that’s not counting the people he refers to without names. (And 16 lines contain foreign languages.) This is an infuriating read. These are almost more like a notebook or a sketch for a poem never written. (9/14)

Canto VI – Amidst the stream-of-conscious allusions, foreign languages and other undecipherable nonsense, there are some truly powerful lines of poetry in this canto. As many others have noted, these lines are reminiscent of Eliot’s Wasteland and Gerontion. (9/14)

Cantos VIII-XI – The so-called Malatesta Cantos telling the life of one Sigmismund Malatesta. He was a strong-man, city-state leader in 1450s Italy. It’s often pointed out that Pound transferred his admiration of Malatesta to Mussolini. That’s most likely true, but one can be interested in Malatesta’s life without being a fascist. My problem with these Cantos is the lack of any poetry. It is (literally in some places) prose broken into lines of poetry. Whereas Canto VII had some compelling poetry, these Cantos are rather prosaic and uninteresting.

When I say these Cantos are about the life of Malatesta, I mean they are a cryptic collage of episodes, letters, history, and dialogue that are meaningless without knowing this obscure figure's life.

Why, I wonder, not re-tell the Malatesta story or provide some context for those who don’t know it? Is that too obvious? Too simple? Too boring? Too hard? Is it not avant-garde enough? Is it too low/middle brow? Can’t you do it? Are you too lazy to try? Does it make you look/feel smarter to be so deliberately obscure? Do you dislike your readers? Do you not care? (9/14)

Cantos XII-XIII – There are two quite different themes. The first tells the story of Baldy Bacon, an entrepreneur of questionable morals, representing everything Pound hates about capitalism. Canto XIII is a collection of sayings by Confucius/Kung, who Pound admired. These are fairly accessible. (9/14)

Cantos XIV-XV – The so-called Hell Cantos. Apparently in Hell, there are fewer foreign languages, so I like it already. This is one of the few sections you can read straight through without an encyclopedia next to you. His ire is graphically clear. (Though in today’s much coarser world his obscenities seems a bit quaint.) (9/14)

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Or followed the water. Or looked back to the flowing;
Others approaching that cataract,
As to dawn out of shadow, the swathed cloths
Now purple and orange,
And the blue water dusky beneath them,
pouring there into the cataract,
With noise of sea over shingle,
striking with:
hah hah ahah thmm, thunb, ah
woh woh araha thumm, bhaaa.
And from the floating bodies, the incense
blue-pale, purple above them.
Shelf of the lotophagoi,
Aerial, cut in the aether.
[from XX]

To Flora's night, with hyacinthus,
With the crocus (spring
sharp in the grass,)
Fifty and forty together
ERI MEN AI TE KUDONIAI
Betuene Aprile and Merche
with sap new in the bough
With plum flowers above them
with almond on the black bough
With jasmine and olive leaf,
To the beat of the measure
From star up to the half-dark
From half-dark to half-dark
Unceasing the measure
Flank by flank on the headland
with the Goddess' eyes to seaward
By Circeo, by Terracina, with the stone eyes
white toward the sea
With one measure, unceasing:
"Fac deum!" "Est factus."
Ver novum!
ver novum!
Thus made the spring,
Can see but their eyes in the dark
not the bough that he walked on.
Beaten from flesh into light
Hath swallowed the fire-ball
A traverso le foglie
His rod hath made god in my belly
Sic loquitur nupta
Cantat sic nupta
Dark shoulders have stirred the lightning
A girl's arms have nested the fire,
Not I but the handmaid kindled
Cantat sic nupta
I have eaten the flame.
[from XXXIX]

Wheat shoots rise new by the altar,
flower from the swift seed
Two span, two span to a woman,
Beyond that she believes not. Nothing is of any importance.
To that is she bent, her intention
To that art thou called ever turning intention,
Whether by night the owl-call, whether by sap in shoot,
Never idle, by no means by no wiles intermittent
Moth is called over mountain
The bull runs blind on the sword, naturans
To the cave art thou called, Odysseus,
By Molu hast thou respite for a little,
By Molu art thou freed from the one bed
that thou may'st return to another
The stars are not in her counting,
To her they are but wandering holes.
[from XLVII]

For the seven lakes, and by no man these verses:
Rain; empty river; a voyage,
Fire from frozen cloud, heavy rain in the twilight
Under the cabin roof was one lantern.
The reeds are heavy; bent;
and the bamboos speak as if weeping.

Autumn moon; hills rise about lakes
against sunset
Evening is like a curtain of cloud,
a blurr above ripples; and through it
sharp long spikes of the cinnamon,
a cold tune amid reeds.
Behind hill the monk's bell
borne on the wind.
Sail passed here in April; may return in October
Boat fades in silver; slowly;
Sun blaze alone on the river.

Where wine flag catches the sunset
Sparse chimneys smoke in the cross light

Comes then snow scur on the river
And a world is covered with jade
Small boat floats like a lanthorn,
The flowing water clots as with cold. And at San Yin
they are a people of leisure.

Wild geese swoop to the sand-bar,
Clouds gather about the hole of the window
Broad water; geese line out with the autumn
Rooks clatter over the fishermen's lanthorns,
A light moves on the north sky line;
where the young boys prod stones for shrimp.
In seventeen hundred came Tsing to these hill lakes.
A light moves on the south sky line.
[from XLIX]

To the hearth god, lungs of the victim
The green frog lifts up his voice
and the white latex is in flower
In red car with jewels incarnadine
to welcome the summer
In this month no destruction
no tree shall be cut at this time
Wild beasts are driven from field
in this month are simples gathered.
The empress offers cocoons to the Son of Heaven
Then goes the sun into Gemini
Virgo in mid heaven at sunset
indigo must not be cut
No wood burnt into charcoal
gates are all open, no tax on the booths.
Now mares go to grazing,
tie up the stallions
Post up the horsebreeding notices
Month of the longest days
Life and death are now equal
Strife is between light and darkness
Wise man stays in his house
Stag droppeth antlers
Grasshopper is loud,
leave no fire open to southward.
[from LII]

Maelid and bassarid among lynxes;
how many? There are more under the oak trees,
We are here waiting the sun-rise
and the next sunrise
for three nights amid lynxes. For three nights
of the oak-wood
and the vines are thick in their branches
no vine lacking flower,
no lynx lacking a flower rope
no Maelid minus a wine jar
this forest is named Melagrana

O lynx, keep the edge on my cider
Keep it clear without cloud

We have lain here amid kilicanthus and sword-flower
The heliads are caught in wild rose vine
The smell of pine mingles with rose leaves
O lynx, be many
of spotted fur and sharp ears.
O lynx, have your eyes gone yellow,
With spotted fur and sharp ears?

Therein is the dance of the bassarids
Therein the centaurs
And now Priapus with Faunus
The Graces have brought αφροδιτην
Her cell is drawn by ten leopards
O lynx, guard my vineyard
As the grape swells under vine leaf
Ηλιοσ is come to our mountains
there is a red glow in the carpet of pine spikes

O lynx, guard my vineyard
As the grape swells under vine leaf
[from LXXIX]

Till the blue grass turn yellow
and the yellow leaves float in air
And Iong Cheng (Canto 6I)
of the line of Kang Hi
by the silk cords of the sunlight
non disunia,
2nd year
2nd month
2nd day
SHENG U, the Edict
Each year in the elder spring, that is the first month
of the spring time,
The herald shall incite yr/ compliance
There are six rites for festival
and 7 Instructions
that all converge as the root tun 1 pen 3
the root veneration (from Mohamed no popery)
To discriminate things
shih 2-5 solid
mu 2 a pattern
fa 1 laws
kung 1 public
szu 1 private
great and small
(That Odysseus' old ma missed his conversation)
To see the light pour,
that is, toward sinceritas
of the word, comprehensive
[from XCIX]

[Chester · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, a fascist he may have been, but his poetry is daring, difficult and beautiful. His images remain the best ever written...with a line he could conjure such feelings, such reactions -- and not always pleasant: "a condom full of black beetles". His writing, nigh inaccessible to those not possessing an almost encylopedic knowledge of classical literature, chinese mythology, science, poetry, etc. is in some senses the ultimate expression of the elitist movement of high modernism...and that's why I love it, and why most people would throw this book against the wall in fury.

[James Debruicker · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know. I KNOW. Pound's indefensible as a person. He was a fascist and an anti-Semite and completely fucking nuts. He's also been dead for a while so I don't feel bad about reading this (much like I'll finally watch Roman Polanski films once that fucker kicks the bucket).

The parts about how shitty World War I is are fantastic. The parts about myth are fantastic. Then Pound goes off on a tear about... I don't know... the gold standard, or something, and then the banks that run the world, and then... yeah.

But the parts about how World War I sucked are *AWESOME*.

[Ezra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tough going, but worth it. Despite its size, it's incomplete, trails off. Full of false starts, wrong paths, arrogance. But also great beauty. It's a gorgeous failure, and well worth exploring, much like life.

[Mitch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Takes years to read these fully. It did pay off. For me, anyway.

[GD · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could read this book again and again forever and still not completely get it, but it is one amazing book. Being fluent in 12 or 13 languages would help.