Explores W.B. Yeats and Ezra Pound's relationship as played out against the backdrop of Mussolini's Italy in the 1920s and 1930s and shows how Yeats, Pound, and others in their Italian network developed a late modernist style aimed at effecting world change.
National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist In this stunning volume of epic breadth, Michael Schmidt connects the lives and works of more than 300 poets over the last 700 years--spanning distant shores from Scotland to Australia to the Caribbean, all sharing the English language. Schmidt reveals how each poet has transformed "a common language of poetry" into the rustic rhythms and elegiac ballads, love sonnets, and experimental postmodern verse that make up our lyrical canon. A comprehensive guided tour that is lively and always accessible, Lives of the Poets illuminates our most transcendent literary tradition.
The first volume of essays devoted to W. B. Yeats's 'A Vision' and the associated system developed by Yeats and his wife, George. 'A Vision' is all-encompassing in its stated aims and scope, and it invites a wide range of approaches--as demonstrated in the essays collected here, written by the foremost scholars in the field.
'The Poets of Rapallo' explores W.B. Yeats and Ezra Pound's relationship as played out against the backdrop of Mussolini's Italy in the 1920s and 1930s and shows how Yeats, Pound, and others in their Italian network developed a late modernist style aimed at effecting world change.
Thom Gunn served as a mouthpiece for his time, illustrating the social, cultural, and historical transformations that have characterized western civilization from World War II until today. Starting with theoretical premises drawn from philosophy, anthropology, and sociology, this work examines Thom Gunn's entire poetic career. In Gunn's early poetry, the author argues, the predominant theme is the desire for freedom from the painful prison of the intellect and from the masks that the individual feels compelled to wear even in his sexual relationships. In Gunn's later poetry, the author notes a gradual opening to human relationships and to Nature, which is also Gunn's vindication and reevaluation of his own nature and the liberation of his long repressed and hidden homosexuality.
Lavishly illustrated, The Way It Wasn't offers an intimate firsthand encounter with 20th-century Modernism, from the extraordinary man who defined it for America.
‘An extraordinary book of real passionate research’ Edmund de Waal In 1945, Ezra Pound was due to stand trial for treason for his broadcasts in Fascist Italy during the Second World War. But before the trial could take place Pound was pronounced insane. Escaping a potential death sentence he was shipped off to St Elizabeths Hospital near Washington, DC, where he was held for over a decade. At the hospital, Pound was at his most contradictory and most controversial: a genius writer – ‘The most important living poet in the English language’ according to T. S. Eliot – but also a traitor and now, seemingly, a madman. But he remained a magnetic figure. Eliot, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell and John Berryman all went to visit him at what was perhaps the world’s most unorthodox literary salon: convened by a fascist and held in a lunatic asylum. Told through the eyes of his illustrious visitors, The Bughouse captures the essence of Pound – the artistic flair, the profound human flaws – whilst telling the grand story of politics and art in the twentieth century.
Pound / Zukofsky is the fifth volume in the ongoing series, The Correspondence of Ezra Pound. Pound (1885-1972) and Zukofsky (1904-1978) met only three times: in Rapallo, Italy, for a few weeks in 1933; for a few hours in New York, in 1939; and briefly again at St. Elizabeths Hospital, in Washington, D.C., in 1954. Yet by the time of their first meeting, they had already exchanged almost 300 letters. over half of their total correspondence. The two poets knew each other quite literally as men of letters.
A Journey into the Heart of German Poetry Experience a deep dive into the mesmerizing world of one of the most significant poets of the 20th century with The Poetry of Rilke. Uncover an unparalleled collection of Rilke's finest works, elegantly translated over the course of two decades by acclaimed scholar Edward Snow. This collection brings to light over two hundred and fifty of Rilke's distinguished gems, including the complete versions of his towering masterpieces, the Sonnets to Orpheus and Duino Elegies. From his early poetic explorations in The Book of Hours to his visionary verses written in the twilight of his life, this anthology spans the breadth of Rilke's literary evolution. This landmark bilingual edition not only invites you to a breathtaking trip to the heart of lyrical and existential poetry but also serves as a comprehensive platform to appreciate the magical interplay between German and English verses. Alongside Rilke’s works, Snow's enlightening commentaries yield a richer comprehension of Rilke's illustrious verses. The Poetry of Rilke will stand as the authoritative single-volume translation of Rilke into English for years to come.
Ezra Pound makes his Penguin Classics debut with this unique selection of his early poems and prose, edited with an introductory essay and notes by Pound expert Ira Nadel. The poetry includes such early masterpieces as “The Seafarer,” “Homage to Sextus Propertius,” “Hugh Selwyn Mauberley,” and the first eight of Pound’s incomparable “Cantos.” The prose includes a series of articles and critical pieces, with essays on Imagism, Vorticism, Joyce, and the well-known “Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry.” First time in Penguin Classics Includes generous selections of Pound's poetry, as well as an assortment of prose