Ezra Pound, Italy, and the Cantos

Description

Ezra Pound lived in Italy spanning six decades (1920s to 1970s) and composed here most of his ambitious American and international epic, The Cantos. He largely employed Italian materials: landscapes, artworks, politics, history, people. Bacigalupo's study approaches Pound's poetry through its principal physical and cultural background proposing a new and rewarding reading of The Cantos as an account of things seen and noted with a poet's eye for the striking detail and telling phrase. We visit with Pound his favorite cities and landscapes (Rome, Venice, Rapallo) and encounter some of his foremost Italian peers, associates and translators. Bacigalupo offers readings of important and neglected writings by Pound and shows how he created an autobiographical myth out of his multifarious experience. We get to see the poet at work and are provided with new essential keys to a nuanced understanding of Pound's lively, tantalizing and contradictory poetic world. This is the first time that so much material concerning a central aspect of Pound's life and writing has been gathered in one volume. Dedication Contents List of Figures List of Abbreviations Acknowledgments Foreword Part I: Places 1 How to Read The Cantos—Rapallo 2 City vs. Country—Venice 3 Greeting the Returning Gods—Rome 4 The Green World Part II: Meetings 5 “And Some Climbing”—Dante 6 Nature, History, and Myth—Montale 7 “My Best Translator”—Izzo 8 “‘Ma’ Riess of Rapallo”—Laughlin Part III: Readings 9 Poet as Anthropologist—“European Paideuma” 10 Moscardino and Enrico Pea (“pronounced peh-ah”) 11 “Republican Correspondence”—The Italian Cantos 72 and 73 12 The Pisan Cantos in Progress Part IV: Endings 13 “I wish he would explain his explanation” 14 End to Torment?—E.P., H.D., and La Martinelli 15 Sant’Ambrogio in the Half-Light 16 America vs. Italy in the Posthumous Cantos Afterword Chronology Notes Index