The Spirit of Romance: An
attempt to define somewhat the charm of the pre-renaissance
literature of Latin-Europe. (Dent, London, 1910; and
Dutton, New York)
The sonnets and Ballate of
Guido Cavalcanti. (Small, Maynard, Boston,
1912)
Ripostes. (Swift, London, 1912; and Mathews,
London, 1913)
DES IMAGISTES: An anthology of the Imagists,
Ezra Pound, Aldington, Amy Lowell, Ford Maddox Hueffer,
and others
Gaudier-Brzeska: A memoir. (John Lane,
London and New York, 1916)
Noh: A study of the Classical Stage of Japan
with Ernest Fenollosa. (Alfred A. Knopf, New York,
1917; and Macmillan, London, 1917)
Lustra with Earlier Poems. (Alfred A. Knopf,
New York, 1917)
PAVANNES AHD divisions. (Prose. In preparation:
Alfred A. Knopf, New York)
“All talk on modern poetry, by people who know,”
wrote Mr. Carl Sandburg in Poetry, “ends
with dragging in Ezra Pound somewhere. He may
be named only to be cursed as wanton and mocker, poseur,
trifler and vagrant. Or he may be classed as
filling a niche today like that of Keats in a preceding
epoch. The point is, he will be mentioned.”
This is a simple statement of fact. But though
Mr. Pound is well known, even having been the victim
of interviews for Sunday papers, it does not follow
that his work is thoroughly known. There are
twenty people who have their opinion of him for every
one who has read his writings with any care. Of
those twenty, there will be some who are shocked,
some who are ruffled, some who are irritated, and
one or two whose sense of dignity is outraged.
The twenty-first critic will probably be one who knows
and admires some of the poems, but who either says:
“Pound is primarily a scholar, a translator,”
or “Pound’s early verse was beautiful;
his later work shows nothing better than the itch for
advertisement, a mischievous desire to be annoying,
or a childish desire to be original.” There
is a third type of reader, rare enough, who has perceived
Mr. Pound for some years, who has followed his career
intelligently, and who recognizes its consistency.
This essay is not written for the first twenty critics
of literature, nor for that rare twenty-second who
has just been mentioned, but for the admirer of a
poem here or there, whose appreciation is capable
of yielding him a larger return. If the reader
is already at the stage where he can maintain at once
the two propositions, “Pound is merely a scholar”
and “Pound is merely a yellow journalist,”
