New Selected Poems and Translations

This newly revised and greatly expanded edition of Ezra Pound’s Selected Poems is intended to articulate Pound for the twenty-first century. Gone are manyof the “stale creampuffs” (as Pound called them) of the 1949 edition. Instead,new emphasis has been laid on the interpenetration of original compositionand translation within Pound’s career. New features of this edition include thecomplete “Homage to Sextus Propertius” in its original lineation, early translations from Cavalcanti, Heine, and the troubadours, as well as late translationsof Sophocles, and the Confucian Odes.

As a lifelong expatriate, Pound parceled out his work to a variety of journalsin England, America, France, and Italy. This new edition takes account of thiscomplex publishing history by giving the poems in the chronological order oftheir original magazine publication. We can observe Pound as he first emergesonto the literary scene in the pages of Ford Madox Ford’s English Review andHarriet Monroe’s Chicago-based Poetry, and then as an agent provocateur forthe avant-garde Little Review, Blast, and The Dial.

Unlike all previous selections, this volume provides annotation to all theearly poems as well as a running commentary on the later Cantos — indispensable to any reader wanting to follow Pound on his epic odyssey through ancientChina, medieval Provence, the Italian Renaissance, the early American Republic, and the darkness of the twentieth century. The editor, Richard Sieburth,provides a chronology of Pound’s life, a new preface, and an informative afterword, “Selecting Pound.” Also included in the appendix are T. S. Eliot’s and JohnBerryman’s original introductions to Pound’s Selected Poems.