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Early Poems
American poet Ezra Pound (1885–1972) was among the most influential literary figures of the twentieth century. As a poet, he founded the Imagist movement (c. 1909–17), which advocated the use of precise, concrete images in a free-verse setting. As an editor, he fostered the careers of William Butler Yeats, T. S. Eliot, and Robert Frost. As a force in the literary world, he championed James Joyce and Wyndham Lewis. Pound also helped to create a modern movement in poetry in which, in T. S. Eliot's words, "English and American poets collaborated, knew each other's works, and influenced each other."
Long an expatriate, Pound's questionable political activities during World War II distracted many from the value of his literary work. Nevertheless, his status as a major American poet has never been in doubt, as this choice collection of fifty-seven early poems amply proves. Here are poems — including a number not found in other anthologies — from Personae (1909), Exultations (1909), Ripostes (1912), and Cathay (1915) as well as selections from his major sequence "Hugh Selwyn Mauberley" (1920).
Long an expatriate, Pound's questionable political activities during World War II distracted many from the value of his literary work. Nevertheless, his status as a major American poet has never been in doubt, as this choice collection of fifty-seven early poems amply proves. Here are poems — including a number not found in other anthologies — from Personae (1909), Exultations (1909), Ripostes (1912), and Cathay (1915) as well as selections from his major sequence "Hugh Selwyn Mauberley" (1920).
- GenresPoetry
64 pages, Paperback
First published February 2, 1996
About the author
Ezra Pound
492 books910 followersEzra 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
May 10, 2016
'Early Poems' by Ezra Pound is a nice, inexpensive collection. I know he wrote and translated a lot of poetry, but I wasn't that familiar with his work. This was a good introduction.
There is a good selection of work here from Five other works. There are poems based on ballads. There are translations. I like epic poetry, but the Asian translations are what really hooked me in this collection. The style goes from heavy toned ballad to these delicate, descriptive poems about something like a river's song or a letter to a wife.
I'm sure my appreciation of this sort of work could have been improved if I'd had a more classic education. I picked it up because it was a short work filled with poems I was unfamiliar with. I enjoyed reading this short volume. It's a good introduction.
I received a review copy of this ebook from Dover Publications and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this ebook.
There is a good selection of work here from Five other works. There are poems based on ballads. There are translations. I like epic poetry, but the Asian translations are what really hooked me in this collection. The style goes from heavy toned ballad to these delicate, descriptive poems about something like a river's song or a letter to a wife.
I'm sure my appreciation of this sort of work could have been improved if I'd had a more classic education. I picked it up because it was a short work filled with poems I was unfamiliar with. I enjoyed reading this short volume. It's a good introduction.
I received a review copy of this ebook from Dover Publications and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this ebook.
April 19, 2009
I'm surprised by how much I like it. "Histrion" is one of my favorite poems of all time. "Hugh Selwyn Mauberly" is brillaint, as well, even though it's only the first few exerpts. I particularly like the selections from "Exhaltations" that appear- and no high school English class is ever complete without a little "The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter"....because it's simply a beautiful piece of writing.
May 19, 2017
I'm a neophyte when it comes to reading and appreciating poetry, mainly due to my own longstanding prejudices, which I have more recently endeavored to overcome. I always had the idea that poetry was just a flakier form of literature, and that poets were dilettantes who wrote works of a few lines in hermeticized language as a shortcut to appearing profound, without having to undertake the serious, sustained development of language, theme, plot, and characterization which prose writers have to tackle.
While I still think that's true of the likes of Allen Ginsberg, it certainly isn't true of Pound or Eliot. Considering that Eliot was a trained philosopher before he was a poet, and that Pound, by his mid twenties, was more-or-less fluent in English, Spanish, French, Italian, Provencal, Latin, Greek, Anglo-Saxon, and Mandarin Chinese, we may safely assume that these were serious men who took seriously the original role of poetry as the first and most rarefied form of literary expression.
It's no accident that I compare Pound to Eliot, of course; both were Americans who moved to Europe as young men and became more European than the Europeans, and both were conservative thinkers who charted a course through the metaphysical wasteland of the twentieth century. Their attempts to revitalize the fading art of poetry while adopting the modernist style is what I find so compelling about them.
Pound, largely as a consequence of his brilliance, is notoriously difficult to understand; even for scholars. He drew from many different cultures and traditions, treated topics one normally wouldn't associate with poetry, like politics and economics, and adopted a variety of different personas. A true conservative, chronological gaps of centuries between subject matter mean little to him when he's dwelling on a particular theme. For this reason, I didn't want to dive straight into the Cantos, his terrifying magnum opus, but rather to read first some of his early poems, which he composed while he was still crafting his unique style.
Even so, many of the poems in this collection are very difficult. But man, some of them are just exquisite. Works of Joycean modernism, metaphysical love poems based on the Troubadours, the pinings of a Chinese bride--this guy was already on his grind.
I'd like to just share my favorite poem from this collection. It's called Scriptor Ignotus, meaning Unknown Writer, set in Ferrara in 1715:
“When I see thee as some poor song-bird
Battering its wings, against this cage we call
Today,
Then would I speak comfort unto thee,
From out the heights I dwell in, when
That great sense of power is upon me
And I see my greater soul-self bending
Sibylwise with that great forty-year epic
That you know of, yet unwrit
But as some child’s toy ’tween my fingers,
And see the sculptors of new ages carve me
thus,
And model with the music of my couplets in
their hearts:
Surely if in the end the epic
And the small kind deed are one;
If to God, the child’s toy and the epic are the
same,
E’en so, did one make a child’s- toy,
He might wright it well
And cunningly, that the child might
Keep it for his children’s children
And all have joy thereof.
Dear, an this dream come true,
Then shall all men say of thee
“She ’twas that played him power at life’s
morn,
And at the twilight Evensong,
And God’s peace dwelt in the mingled chords
She drew from out the shadows of the past,
And old world melodies that else
He had known only in his dreams
Of Iseult and of Beatrice.
Dear, an this dream come true,
I, who being poet only,
Can give thee poor words only,
Add this one poor other tribute,
This thing men call immortality.
A gift I give thee even as Ronsard gave it.
Seeing before time, one sweet face grown
old,
And seeing the old eyes grow bright
From out the border of Her fire-lit wrinkles,
As she should make boast unto her maids
“Ronsard hath sung the beauty, my beauty,
Of the days that I was fair.”
So hath the boon been given, by the poets of
old time
(Dante to Beatrice, — an I profane not—)
Yet with my lesser power shall I not strive
To give it thee?
All ends of things are with Him
From whom are all things in their essence.
If my power be lesser
Shall my striving be less keen?
But rather more! if I would reach the goal,
Take then the striving!
“And if,” for so the Florentine hath writ
When having put all his heart
Into his “Youth’s Dear Book”
He yet strove to do more honour
To that lady dwelling in his inmost soul
He would wax yet greater
To make her earthly glory more.
Though sight of hell and heaven were price
thereof,
If so it be His will, with whom
Are all things and through whom
Are all things good,
Will I make for thee and for the beauty of thy
music
A new thing
As hath not heretofore been writ.
Take then my promise!"
Lord have mercy.
While I still think that's true of the likes of Allen Ginsberg, it certainly isn't true of Pound or Eliot. Considering that Eliot was a trained philosopher before he was a poet, and that Pound, by his mid twenties, was more-or-less fluent in English, Spanish, French, Italian, Provencal, Latin, Greek, Anglo-Saxon, and Mandarin Chinese, we may safely assume that these were serious men who took seriously the original role of poetry as the first and most rarefied form of literary expression.
It's no accident that I compare Pound to Eliot, of course; both were Americans who moved to Europe as young men and became more European than the Europeans, and both were conservative thinkers who charted a course through the metaphysical wasteland of the twentieth century. Their attempts to revitalize the fading art of poetry while adopting the modernist style is what I find so compelling about them.
Pound, largely as a consequence of his brilliance, is notoriously difficult to understand; even for scholars. He drew from many different cultures and traditions, treated topics one normally wouldn't associate with poetry, like politics and economics, and adopted a variety of different personas. A true conservative, chronological gaps of centuries between subject matter mean little to him when he's dwelling on a particular theme. For this reason, I didn't want to dive straight into the Cantos, his terrifying magnum opus, but rather to read first some of his early poems, which he composed while he was still crafting his unique style.
Even so, many of the poems in this collection are very difficult. But man, some of them are just exquisite. Works of Joycean modernism, metaphysical love poems based on the Troubadours, the pinings of a Chinese bride--this guy was already on his grind.
I'd like to just share my favorite poem from this collection. It's called Scriptor Ignotus, meaning Unknown Writer, set in Ferrara in 1715:
“When I see thee as some poor song-bird
Battering its wings, against this cage we call
Today,
Then would I speak comfort unto thee,
From out the heights I dwell in, when
That great sense of power is upon me
And I see my greater soul-self bending
Sibylwise with that great forty-year epic
That you know of, yet unwrit
But as some child’s toy ’tween my fingers,
And see the sculptors of new ages carve me
thus,
And model with the music of my couplets in
their hearts:
Surely if in the end the epic
And the small kind deed are one;
If to God, the child’s toy and the epic are the
same,
E’en so, did one make a child’s- toy,
He might wright it well
And cunningly, that the child might
Keep it for his children’s children
And all have joy thereof.
Dear, an this dream come true,
Then shall all men say of thee
“She ’twas that played him power at life’s
morn,
And at the twilight Evensong,
And God’s peace dwelt in the mingled chords
She drew from out the shadows of the past,
And old world melodies that else
He had known only in his dreams
Of Iseult and of Beatrice.
Dear, an this dream come true,
I, who being poet only,
Can give thee poor words only,
Add this one poor other tribute,
This thing men call immortality.
A gift I give thee even as Ronsard gave it.
Seeing before time, one sweet face grown
old,
And seeing the old eyes grow bright
From out the border of Her fire-lit wrinkles,
As she should make boast unto her maids
“Ronsard hath sung the beauty, my beauty,
Of the days that I was fair.”
So hath the boon been given, by the poets of
old time
(Dante to Beatrice, — an I profane not—)
Yet with my lesser power shall I not strive
To give it thee?
All ends of things are with Him
From whom are all things in their essence.
If my power be lesser
Shall my striving be less keen?
But rather more! if I would reach the goal,
Take then the striving!
“And if,” for so the Florentine hath writ
When having put all his heart
Into his “Youth’s Dear Book”
He yet strove to do more honour
To that lady dwelling in his inmost soul
He would wax yet greater
To make her earthly glory more.
Though sight of hell and heaven were price
thereof,
If so it be His will, with whom
Are all things and through whom
Are all things good,
Will I make for thee and for the beauty of thy
music
A new thing
As hath not heretofore been writ.
Take then my promise!"
Lord have mercy.
June 27, 2020
While I was reading his essays on Poetry and Writing I realized I did not know much of his verse, so I read this. I very much loved his interpretations of medieval European versification, his playing around with the Villonaud for example, some alternative form of the Villanelle I guess, with lots of repeating sing song lines. And the romanticism of the poems about the desert, the crusade, ancient China and unrequited love, very inspiring. Lots of it are translations, and at the same time the feeling remains that he took lots of liberties with other peoples lyrics, keeping the spirit alive. Some of it is sublime, like this:
Couplet
Drawing a sword, cut into water, water again flow:
Raise cup, quench sorrow, sorrow again sorry.
Pound misunderstood the world in a bad way during world war two, and made some really bad choices. He was better of reminiscing on the subtleties of early European romance
Couplet
Drawing a sword, cut into water, water again flow:
Raise cup, quench sorrow, sorrow again sorry.
Pound misunderstood the world in a bad way during world war two, and made some really bad choices. He was better of reminiscing on the subtleties of early European romance
October 8, 2020
Early Poems by Ezra Pound covers his early work both writing and translating poetry. A few years ago I read some of Pound's later works and could not get into the writing or style. His early works are much different and amazingly well done. I was captivated by this entire collection. The many of the poems are lyrical or ballads. The poems settings range from medieval Europe to China. The writing is the ideal of poetry:
Aye! I am a poet and upon my tomb
Shall maidens scatter rose leaves
and men myrtles, ere the night
Slays day with her dark sword.
Pound's early work has changed my opinion of him as a poet. Perhaps, it was that I was not in tune with poetry at the time or his style had changed drastically over time. This collection is put together by Dover Thrift and besides being a great collection, it is also very affordable at $2.50. Outstanding poetry and an outstanding value.
Aye! I am a poet and upon my tomb
Shall maidens scatter rose leaves
and men myrtles, ere the night
Slays day with her dark sword.
Pound's early work has changed my opinion of him as a poet. Perhaps, it was that I was not in tune with poetry at the time or his style had changed drastically over time. This collection is put together by Dover Thrift and besides being a great collection, it is also very affordable at $2.50. Outstanding poetry and an outstanding value.
August 12, 2022
“When I behold how black, immortal ink
Drips from my deathless pen— ah, well-away!
Why should we stop at all for what I think?
There is enough in what I chance to say.” -Silet
The poems in this collection are fairly hit-or-miss, with an incredible variance in writing style, poetic medium, and subject matter. There are a few in here that made a fairly big impact on me on the first read. Now that I have finished it, I might go back for a second read. It is probably more impactful to people that lived in Pound’s time, but I see why Hemingway thought he was a stand-up kind of guy.
Drips from my deathless pen— ah, well-away!
Why should we stop at all for what I think?
There is enough in what I chance to say.” -Silet
The poems in this collection are fairly hit-or-miss, with an incredible variance in writing style, poetic medium, and subject matter. There are a few in here that made a fairly big impact on me on the first read. Now that I have finished it, I might go back for a second read. It is probably more impactful to people that lived in Pound’s time, but I see why Hemingway thought he was a stand-up kind of guy.
September 24, 2021
i will spend my last days living in an italian monastery and reading the Personae
March 10, 2024
steta kaj nije dodao prstohvat fasizma, would have been fun
February 23, 2009
Surprising.
June 10, 2009
Early Poems (Dover Thrift Editions) by Ezra Pound (1996)
March 24, 2011
Some really sweet short poems.
December 24, 2016
Beautiful
December 15, 2015
absolutely brilliant
I recived a copy from netgalley for my honest review.
I recived a copy from netgalley for my honest review.
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June 15, 2018811.52 P876e 1996
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews