Pound was Great.

Pound, the poet-writer genius of the 20th Century. Bought many of his poems, all the Cantos. Visited Rapallo, places where he lived and worked in London and Paris. Pound is he catalyst. He opens up one's interest in other poets...HD, Ford, TS Eliot, writers like Hemingway, modernist music, the avant garde, authentic performance of Baroque music. The Troubador tradition. Europe as a unique artistic entity? Chinese and Japanese art, history, culture.

A revolutionary mind! R.I.P

Thank you much for sharing this here. Hugh Kenner wrote an extensive history of the literary epoch, The Pound Era. it is befuddling to know how influential and impactful he was during his time, with other poets especially, and now he's known mostly as a name, barely read, barely considered. It is fascinating to explore just what it was that electrified people, and this documentary captures much of it: boatloads of charisma, brusque erudition, a romantic bent for lyricism and medieval tradition, and a mythical, musical, rolling line.

Speaking from the profundity of eternal spirit comes the TRUTH OF POETRY

@franciscosantos242

3 жыл бұрын

the only way

15:21 whoa It was great to hear from his family especially, thank you.

As much as pound insulted America and greed he is truly a product only America could produce

@ryanjones5367

3 жыл бұрын

insulting greed is a virtue

Wonderful. Thank you.

God Bless EP and may he be as one with his heritage again

@josephcullen4945

4 жыл бұрын

Matthew Stokes Pound saw the genius of James Joyce before most of his contemporaries. He helped Joyce get the recognition he deserved. This was a very generous and remarkable contribution to world culture that should be recognized.

Thanks for posting

38:39 Weeks in an outdoor 6 x 4 ft. death cage with a concrete floor inducing a mental breakdown, but I am told to believe "it was reasonably comfortable". Riiight.

Wow! - again. Pound was the modern Daedalus; he flew too high, to close to the sun and was hurled back to the Earth for it. FWIW, I have the whole "Voices & Visions series, they no longer sell it. When I got my copy in DVD format, Annenberg no longer had complete sets but had "replacement" discs, and so I was able to assemble a set that way. The former price of $400 a set had been knocked down to roughly a 10th of that to clear old stock. I'd gladly share if that was possible, Steven. Also, kudos on "In Memoriam" and the piece on Proust. NEVER take this site down!

@therexbellator

2 жыл бұрын

With respect, Daedalus was brought down by ambition; Pound was undone by his own hubris, fighting for ideals based on misanthropy and bigotry. In the short time I've studied him I can appreciate his poetic genius -- in that sense I can separate the art from the artist -- but the man himself was flawed and corrupted by some terrible beliefs. We shouldn't so much celebrate him, but rather, deeply lament that a genius was laid so low by his own human failings.

Ezra Pound......Man Against Time.......

he started planning his cantos at 17

@davidmehnert6206

4 жыл бұрын

“Sunset like the grasshopper flying” - CANTO XVII, last line

Volume here very much better !!!

Эзра Паунд упоминается в литературе как поэт верлибра. Писал песни. Паунд повлиял на мировую литературу.

All these people saying the verse is beautiful & that his views are separate do not understand poetics. His verse contains his views. Verse is not just Romantic emotions, it is an intellectual & responsible concern.

@seanettles657

4 жыл бұрын

Exactly. One does not separate the two and maintain any integrity in analysis.

@samisiddiqi5411

4 жыл бұрын

What's wrong with his views?

@33cattt49

3 жыл бұрын

@@samisiddiqi5411 absolutely nothing.

@pinkyteel525

2 жыл бұрын

He was lost to rhetoric.

@pinkyteel525

2 жыл бұрын

@@samisiddiqi5411 He was lost to rhetoric.

the ty cobb of poetry.

Excellent documentary! Thank you! Can you please let me know what the music of the end credits is?

Pompous poetry

Hero

holy christ, pound writing ideograms and in his natural speaking voice - not some weird inflected personae

@blotfd

5 жыл бұрын

@Liam Cooper - that was amazing!

@constancewalsh3646

4 жыл бұрын

holy christ not too strong an ecstatic expression for this voice! readers have become excruciating, destroying all they read and my own heart. I am now listening to this for the second and not last time. thank you!

Does anyone know the music played from minute 48? Moving. Fine documentary to a fine man.

@StevenParrisWard

6 жыл бұрын

Oboe Concerto in D minor Marcello, a Bach transcript.

@steadhelium

6 жыл бұрын

Very much appreciated, thanks.

Does anyone know the piece played around 41:56? When Kenner is talking about the Pisan Cantos?

@tomojay28

3 ай бұрын

The credits list "Bach After Midnight" from Arabesque Recordings; there's an LP from Denis Vaughan with that title & publisher though surprising no sample on KZread to confirm that's the source

Pound tried oh so hard to craft important poetry. Most of the time he failed. He was important in the history of poetry because he helped Eliot and Joyce and Yeats.

A magnificent poet with the best ear of his generation. And an unmatched editor of others' writing; Yeats and Eliot - in different ways - differed to his literary judgment at important times in their lives. But he was politically naive in a profound way, though perhaps not entirely the "fool" that Kazin describes, nor the "village idiot" that another critic called him. Ultimately a tragic tale.

@StevenParrisWard

6 жыл бұрын

Thank you for your profound comment Mr FInklestein, which sums up nicely the paradox and dangers of being a poetic genius and misplaced political idealist. He rightly came to be embarrassed and regretful in later life by his earlier fascist views and anti semitic stance, which he attributed to naivety. As you say ultimately a tragic tale. 'Any good I've done has been spoiled by bad intentions-the preoccupation with irrelevant and stupid things,' [he] replied. Then very slowly, with emphasis, surely conscious of Ginsberg being Jewish: 'But the worst mistake I made was that stupid, suburban prejudice of anti-semitism.'

@aryehfinklestein9041

6 жыл бұрын

Well said.

@1cathexis

6 жыл бұрын

I'm no expert, that's for sure. But I'll take a chance and offer my opinion; Pound was a poet of profound sublimity who allowed himself to mired in the mundane concerns of economics and governance. He spent his efforts doggedly tramping over rugged hills when he should've been scaling the highest heights. We glimpse those heights often in his work, like a climber peering at the summit. But in the end, he forces us to rut around in the doldrums of his deluded politics. (Please excuse my pretentiousness - I doubt Ezra would!).

@ferguscullen8451

5 жыл бұрын

@@1cathexis I like your topographical analogy. But there are valid and piercing insights into the relation of art to economy and both to civilisation in the Cantos among the reams of dull, silly, doctrinaire stuff. with usura the line grows thick with usura is no clear demarcation (XLV) Pull down thy vanity, it is not man Made courage, or made order, or made grace, Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down (LXXXI).

@justmegeorgie5930

5 жыл бұрын

@@StevenParrisWard YOU'RE COMMENT IS BRILLIANT! HERE'S AN ARTICLE ON THE BRILLIANT, YET SAD MIND THAT WAS EZRA POUND. www.google.com/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/06/09/the-pound-error/amp

Excellent doc. I think it´s remarkable that he pointed at monetary theory as something crucial, and that he took a stand about it. I would wholly commend him for it, even for being obsessed about it, bearing in mind it wasn´t even his main obsession. Also, the treatment he received was appalling. Of course one has to separate the poet form his political activism in order to be politically correct, but I wouldn´t do such a thing. No one bothers to do that with the many outright communist artists of the time, and it doesn´t mean one would subscribe to communism. Besides, being against FDR speaks to his credit if anything, in my opinion.

@majabugarski386

2 жыл бұрын

Javier Borda How did even occur in your mind to bring these nazi villains into any relationship with communists ??? Shame on you. Communist poets consciously and loudly condemn nazi atrocities, and call on people to fight against those destroyers of all that is humane and good.

So what did Ezra suggest replacing usury with ?

@notsocrates9529

3 ай бұрын

How about not exploiting and leeching off of other people? Making money off of money produces nothing of tangible value and is a Ponzi scheme.

"A literary peacock". I despise critics. They are all parasites.

Boomers don’t get it.

DARK KISSES And so, beneath a flood of Antique Light, As innocent as are the Lilies white To my first Ardours of a mysterious kind from sacred height; but wait! that certain esoteric something chose the great IMMORTAL throats plunging their heat into the surging flow such jeweleries as the gods do go of nude and precious limb slipping away to shun vague perishings of FATE that cutting hollow reeds my heart would tame I saw far off, among the glaucous gold of foliage entwined, to where Death runs cold an animal, animated youth languorously swaying depicts those goddesses: by MASQUERADES we'll rip the veils that sanctify their shades and SAYING: we adore you, frivolous shadow, fierce delight of innocent abandon's writhing naked flight as fiery lightning of my lips made known our luminous skins, alone.

@StevenParrisWard

3 жыл бұрын

Mallarme -The Afternoon of a Faun.

@JimOverbeckgenius

3 жыл бұрын

@@StevenParrisWard Seriously influenced by as is much of my painting. See KZread Dolcedo Arte of the Thunderbolt Ground-floor & Mezzanine.

Pound must have been incredibly difficult to live with, even before he went truly mad. There was certainly never a human being who was more certain of his own brilliance. His arrogance was monumental. His outlook was ultimately profoundly conservative, which was so at odds with his belief that he was doing something genuinely new.

@themaelstromnotebook5418

3 жыл бұрын

Pound didn't go mad, he went silent because no one would listen to the conception (correct, in my view) that all modern wars were financial wars, and the boomers were brainwashed into thinking it was all simply tied to madness and anti-semitism, instead of actually reading what he said (or reading his sources; Adams, Jackson, Major Douglas, Alexander Del Mar etc. He pleaded insanity so as to avoid a death sentence, or being sentenced to life imprisonment). Luckily the full Pound will come back once they've all gone, and those who have learned something of his theories through the internet, and, through the downloaded speeches, they will be able to interpret him differently, and can come to their own conclusions. Why - if you are conservative - can you not make something 'new'? You reduce Pound beyond any reality of who he was. Does this mean if you are a conservative western poet you simply replicate Homer ad infinitum? Of course not. You preserve and augment with new innovation. That would be like saying a liberal poet seeks to preserve/conserve nothing, or have no significant influences from the past. Life is irrevocably more complex than this.

Does anyone dislike the way they used to recite as I do? dragging the words and using that pompous and artificial intonation, all the same. It annoys me a great deal.

@blotfd

5 жыл бұрын

@Infinita Fenix - sorta. like when i 1st heard fdr's speeches. its a high brow intellectual way of speaking around the 1850s-1940s it seems. ezra was from idaho so he had to have forced himself to speak english that way. spoke 9 languages too..damn! wasnt lazy

@shuttlefeather

4 жыл бұрын

@@DanielPaulGrechPereira His pronunciation is wrong. It is possible to roll r's at the beginning of words, but not intervocalic or at the end of words in English. His native dialect is American.

@joshorourke4985

4 жыл бұрын

The vatic, oracular voice is no longer popular in poetry and can, at times, sound strained or overly portentous to our ears. But it is worth remembering that this is just because we have become accustomed to associating a more personal, conversational style, with authentic utterances. The function of the vatic voice was partly to convey that it is not merely the individual poet who is speaking, but rather the living tradition of poetry is speaking through the individual poet. In a certain light, I think our inability to hear this voice now reflects more poorly on our us, on our overly individualistic culture, and our excessive concern with personal subjectivity.

@patrickglass9323

3 жыл бұрын

:@@joshorourke4985 Sound point. Thank you for this important explanation.

I wonder - did he know how ridiculous he was?

@themaelstromnotebook5418

3 жыл бұрын

Only insofar as you don't know how ridiculous you are. Besides, risking ridicule is one of the great defining factors to characterise great artists, in fact I might put it as THE defining factor, above technique and study. Read the first notices on Whitman's 'Leaves of Grass', or the review on William Blake's first exhibition (the internet is a wonderful tool IF you know how to use it). Most artists truly doing/saying something new are characterized as 'mad/ridiculous'.

@miriam7266

Ай бұрын

Quoi de plus ridicule que de se désigner soi-même comme la voix du nouvel âge de l'humanité moderne , pour un érudit littéraire en poésie !

Pound was mad. I appreciate his contribution to imagist poetry but he was mad.

@AndreasDivus1

4 жыл бұрын

Sure, but all the best artists are broken in one way or another.

@Bix12

4 жыл бұрын

he was absurdity personified

@Chanelson2010

4 жыл бұрын

so what?