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Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry

Chapter 7: PROSE
By T. S. Eliot
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About This Book

This essay offers a close critical account of a contemporary poet's development, assessing use of meter, shifting styles, and the movement from concise lyric forms toward more expansive, experimental pieces. It surveys translations, editorial projects, and major collections while tracing techniques associated with imagism, disciplined prosody, and bold linguistic experiments. The critic examines varied responses from reviewers, recommends a reading order to clarify artistic continuity, and isolates recurring thematic concerns alongside formal innovations. A concluding bibliography and selective notes supply practical references for readers wishing to follow the poet's publications and critical reception.

    He thought, how easy this killing. He rushed with his
    spearshaft gripped under his arm. He cried out, "I am
    Kagekiyo of the Heike." He rushed on to take them. He
    pierced through the helmet vizards of Miyanoya. Miyanoya
    fled twice, and again; and Kagekiyo cried: "You shall not
    escape me!" He leaped and wrenched off his helmet. "Eya!"
    The vizard broke and remained in his hand, and Miyanoya
    still fled afar, and afar, and he looked back crying in
    terror, "How terrible, how heavy your arm!" And Kagekiyo
    called at him, "How tough the shaft of your neck is!" And
    they both laughed out over the battle, and went off each his
    own way.

The "Times Literary Supplement" spoke of Mr. Pound's "mastery of beautiful diction" and his "cunningly rhythmically prose," in its review of the "Noh."

Even since "Lustra," Mr. Pound has moved again. This move is to the epic, of which three cantos appear in the American "Lustra" (they have already appeared in "Poetry"—Miss Monroe deserves great honour for her courage in printing an epic poem in this twentieth century—but the version in "Lustra" is revised and is improved by revision). We will leave it as a test: when anyone has studied Mr. Pound's poems in chronological order, and has mastered "Lustra" and "Cathay," he is prepared for the Cantos— but not till then. If the reader then fails to like them, he has probably omitted some step in his progress, and had better go back and retrace the journey.





BIBLIOGRAPHY OF BOOKS

AND PARTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF NOTABLE CRITICAL ARTICLES BY EZRA POUND

POEMS

A LUME SPENTO (100 copies). Antonelli, Venice, June, 1908.

A QUINZAINE FOR THIS YULE.
  First 100 printed by Pollock, London, December, 1908.

  Second 100 published under Elkin Mathews' imprint, London,
    December, 1908.

PERSONAE. Mathews, London, Spring, 1909.

EXULTATIONS. Mathews, London, Autumn, 1909.

PROSE

THE SPIRIT OF ROMANCE. Dent, London, 1910.

POEMS

PROVENÇA (a selection of poems from "Personae" and
  "Exultations" with new poems). Small Maynard, Boston, 1910.

CANZONI. Mathews, London, 1911.

THE SONNETS AND BALLATE OF GUIDO CAVALCANTI (translated).
  Small Maynard, Boston, 1912.

  A cheaper edition of the same, Swift and Co., London, 1912.
  The bulk of this edition destroyed by fire.
RIPOSTES. Swift, London, 1912.
  (Note.—This book contains the first announcement of
  Imagism, in the foreword to the poems of T. E. Hulme.)

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

"A FEW DON'TS BY AN IMAGISTE," in "Poetry," for March, 1913.

"CONTEMPORANIA" (poems), in "Poetry," April, 1913.

POEMS

PERSONAE, EXULTATIONS, CANZONI, RIPOSTES, published in two
  volumes. Mathews, London, 1913.

FIRST OF THE NOTES ON JAMES JOYCE, "Egoist," January, 1914.

FIRST OF THE ARTICLES CONCERNING GAUDIER-BRZESKA, "Egoist,"
  February, 1914.

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

"DES IMAGISTES," poems by several authors selected by Ezra
  Pound, published as a number of "The Glebe," in New York.
  February, 1914.

  Alfred Kreymborg was at this time editor of "The Glebe." The
  first arrangements for the anthology were made through the
  kind offices of John Cournos during the winter of 1912-13.

  The English edition of this anthology published by The Poetry
  Book Shop. London, 1914.

ARTICLE ON WYNDHAM LEWIS, "Egoist," June 15, 1914.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO FIRST NUMBER OF "Blast," June 20, 1914.

"VORTICISM," an article in "The Fortnightly Review," September,
  1914.
"GAUDIER-BRZESKA," an article in "The New Age," February 4,
  1915.

CONTRIBUTIONS to second number of "Blast," 1915.

POEMS

CATHAY. Mathews, London, April, 1915. (Translations from the
  Chinese from the notes of Ernest Fenollosa.)

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

THE CATHOLIC ANTHOLOGY, edited by Ezra Pound. Mathews, London,
  December, 1915.

GAUDIER-BRZESKA, a memoir. John Lane, London and New York, 1916.

LUSTRA (poems) public edition, pp. 116. Mathews, London, 1916.
  200 copies privately printed and numbered, pp. 124.
CERTAIN NOBLE PLAYS OF JAPAN. Cuala Press, Dundrum, Ireland,
  1916. Translated by Ernest Fenollosa and Ezra Pound, with an
  introduction by William Butler Yeats.
NOH, or Accomplishment. A study of the Classical Stage of
  Japan, including translations of fifteen plays, by Ernest
  Fenollosa and Ezra Pound. Macmillan, London, 1917. Knopf, New
  York, 1917.
PASSAGES FROM THE LETTERS OF JOHN BUTLER YEATS, selected by Ezra
  Pound, with brief editorial note. Cuala Press, 1917.
LUSTRA, with Earlier Poems, Knopf, New York, 1917. (This
  collection of Mr. Pound's poems contains all that he now
  thinks fit to republish.)

  There is also a privately-printed edition of fifty copies,
  with a reproduction of a drawing of Ezra Pound by Henri
  Gaudier-Brzeska (New York, 1917).
PAVANNES and DIVISIONS (Prose), in preparation. Knopf,
  New York.