Contemporary American Literature Part 53

The Voice of the Street. 1906.

The Harbor. 1915.

His Family. 1917.

His Second Wife. 1918.

The Village. 1918.

"The Dark People," Russia's Crisis. 1918.

Blind. 1920.

Beggar's Gold. 1921.

STUDIES AND REVIEWS

Bookm. 41 ('15): 115 (portrait).

Cur. Op. 58 ('15): 266 (portrait).

Ind. 94 ('18): 229 (portrait).

Mentor, 6 ('18): 7 (portrait).

R. of Rs. 51 ('15): 631 (portrait).

Unpop. R. 6 ('16): 231.

World Today, 18 ('10): 232 (portrait).

See also _Book Review Digest_, 1915, 1917, 1918, 1920.

+Ezra (Loomis) Pound+--poet, critic.

Born at Hailey, Idaho, 1885. Of English descent; on his mother's side distantly related to Longfellow. Ph.B., Hamilton College. Fellow of the University of Pennsylvania. Traveled in Spain, in Italy, in Provence, 1906-7; lived in Venice, and finally made his home in England. London editor of _The Little Review_, 1917-9, and foreign correspondent of _Poetry_, 1912-9.

SUGGESTIONS FOR READING

1. Mr. Pound is an experimenter in verse, who has come under many influences and belonged to many schools. His work should be studied chronologically to discover these changes in interest and relations.h.i.+p.

To be noted among the influences are: (1) the mediaeval poetry of Provence; (2) the Greek poets; (3) the Latin poets of the Empire; (4) among modern French poets, Laurent Tailhade; (5) the poets of China and j.a.pan, whom he learned to know through the ma.n.u.script notes of Ernest Fenollosa; (6) the work of the English Imagists (cf. especially the poems of T.E. Hulme, published in Mr. Pound's volume called _Ripostes_); (7) the work of the Vorticist school of poets and artists (cf. _Blast_, edited by Wyndham Lewis), and the more accessible periodical, _The Egoist_, of which Richard Aldington (cf. Manly and Rickert, _Contemporary British Literature_) is a.s.sistant editor.

2. Consider also this from his own theory of poetry: "Poetry is a sort of inspired mathematics, which gives us equations, not for abstract figures, triangles, spheres and the like, but equations for the human emotions. If one have a mind which inclines to magic rather than science, one will prefer to speak of these equations as spells or incantations; it sounds more arcane, mysterious, recondite."

Can this be related to the qualities of Mr. Pound's poetry?

3. After reading Mr. Pound's output, discuss the adequacy of the following: "When content has become for an artist merely something to inflate and display form with, then the petty serves as well as the great, the ign.o.ble equally with the lofty, the unlovely like the beautiful, the sordid as the clean.... Real feeling consequently becomes rarer, and the artist descends to trivialities of observation, vagaries of a.s.sertion, or mere _bravado_ of standards and expression--pure tilting at convention."

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Provenca: Poems Selected from Personae, Exultations, and Canzoniere.

1910.

The Spirit of Romance. 1910.

The Sonnets and Ballate of Cavalcanti. 1912. (Translations.) Ripostes of Ezra Pound, whereto are Appended the Complete Poetical Works of T.E. Hulme. 1912.

Gaudier Brzeska; a Memoir. 1916.

l.u.s.tra of Ezra Pound, with Earlier Poems. 1917.

Noh; or, Accomplishment; a Study of the Cla.s.sical Stage of j.a.pan. 1917.

(With Ernest F. Fenollosa.) Pavannes and Divisions. 1918. (Essays and sketches.) Quia Pauper Amavi. 1919. (English edition.) Instigations, 1920. (Criticism.) *Umbra: the Early Poems of Ezra Pound, All That He Now Wishes to Keep in Circulation from "Personae," "Exultations," "Ripostes." With Translations from Guido Cavalcanti and Arnaut Daniel and Poems by the Late T.E. Hulme. 1920.

Also in: Des Imagistes. 1914.

Poetry. (_Pa.s.sim._) The Little Review. (_Pa.s.sim._)

Cf. also Ezra Pound, his Metric and Poetry. 1917. (Bibliography, p. 29.)

STUDIES AND REVIEWS

Untermeyer.

Acad. 81 ('11): 354.

Ath. 1911, 2: 238; 1919, 2: 1065, 1132, 1268.

Bookm. 35 ('12): 156; 46 ('18): 577.

Bookm. (Lond.) 36 ('09): 154 (portrait); 52 ('17): 151.

Chapbook, 1-2: May, 1920: 22. (Fletcher.) Dial, 54 ('13): 370; 69 ('20): 283 (portrait); 72 ('22): 87.

Egoist, 2 ('15): 71; 4 ('17): 7, 27, 44.

Eng. Rev. 2 ('09): 627.

Ind. 70 ('11): 259 (portrait).

Lond. Times, Sept. 20, 1918: 437.

New Repub. 16 ('18): 83.

New Statesman, 8 ('17): 332, 476.

No. Am. 211 ('20): 658. (May Sinclair.) Poetry, 7 ('16): 249 (Carl Sandburg); 11 ('18): 330; 12 ('18): 221; 14 ('19): 52 (William Gardner Hale); 15 ('20): 211; 16 ('20): 213.

+(John) Herbert Quick+ (Iowa, 1861)--novelist.

Farmer, lawyer, editor of _Farm and Fireside_, 1909-16. Author of _The Fairview Idea_, 1919; and of _Vandemark's Folly_ 1922, which introduces fresh material (ca.n.a.lboat life) into fiction, and also contributes to the literature that deals with the opening up of the middle west.

See _Book Review Digest_, 1919.

+Lizette Woodworth Reese+--poet.

Born at Baltimore, in 1856. Educated in private and public schools.

Teacher in Baltimore high school.

Her poems, always conventional in form and limited in ideas, are admired for their simplicity, intensity of emotion, and perfection of technique.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A Branch of May. 1887.

A Handful of Lavender. 1891.

A Quiet Road. 1896.

A Wayside Lute. 1909.

Spicewood. 1920.