Walter Baumann and William Pratt, eds. Ezra Pound and London.

New Pespectives. New York: AMS Press, 2015.

In 1908 Pound arrived in London with his first book of poetry, A Lume Spento, in hand and would go on to start a revolution in English letters. By the time he left in 1920, he had taken on the role of chief apostle of Modernism in literature. A little more than a century later, in 2011, scholars gathered to celebrate his life and work at the The Ezra Pound International Conference in London. Ezra Pound and London: New Perspectives collects a selection of the insightful, thorough, and thought-provoking papers given at the conference.

The essays cover a broad range of topics, including biographical accounts of Pound through the recollections of his daughter, Mary de Rachewiltz, and his nephew, the late Peter Rudge, considerations of the place of London in The Cantos, discussions of Pound’s connections to other writers, re-examinations of Pound’s reading of the classics and of the influence of the fine arts on his aesthetic vision, and reflections on Pound’s early political views.

CONTENTS

Preface

I. POUND REMEMBERED

Mary de Rachewiltz, “Kinship and Friendship”

Peter Rudge, “Family Connections”

II. LONDON IN THE CANTOS

William Pratt, “Odi et Amo: Pound’s Love-Hate-Love Affair with London”

Gavin Selerie, “‘And now why’: London Ghosts and their Haunts”

III. POUND AND OTHER WRITERS

Anne Conover, “Ezra Pound, Confucius, and the Fenellosa Notebooks”

Diana Collecott, “‘The women of 1914’: Women’s Networks in Literary London during World War One”

Massimo Bacigalupo, “Yeats in Mauberley”

John Gery, “‘Scaled Invention or True Artistry’: Davie’s Pound and Pound’s Davie”

IV. POUND AND THE CLASSICS

Peter Liebregts, “Wrestling with Verbiage: Ezra Pound, Thomas Stanley and Aeschylus”

Walter Baumann, “‘(as seen by Mackail)’: Ezra Pound’s Classics Guru”

V. POUND AND THE FINE ARTS

Jo Brantley Berryman, “Ezra Pound, William Brooke Smith and Hokusai”

Ira B. Nadel, “Picasso and Pound”

Stephen Romer, “‘Building Ornamentation!’ E.P.’s Architectural Walkabouts in London”

Evelyn Haller, “Ezra Pound, Grand Couturier”

VI. POUND AND POLITICS

Roxana Preda, “‘A Broken Bundle of Mirrors’: An Exploration of Pound’s Vorticist Portraiture”

Stephen Wilson, “Ezra Pound, Belligerent”

Contributors

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