Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T15:33:44.126Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Ezra Pound's Poetic Anthologies and the Architecture of Reading

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

John G. Nichols
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Between 1914 and 1933, Ezra Pound edited four anthologies of poetry: Des Imagistes, Catholic Anthology, Profile, and Active Anthology. These compilations arose out of crucial stages of Pound's career in the teens, when he reacted against Victorian poetry, and in the 1930s, when he acted as a spokesperson for the modernist movement. Using the anthology as a vehicle for the presentation of innovative poetry as well as a guidebook on how to read it, Pound experimented with anthology formats to propel readers into the project of modernism through devices such as elliptical prefaces and fragmentary notes. He sought to train readers for the demands of interpreting modernist poetry and to reclaim control over an audience educated by burgeoning university literature departments and the mainstream poetic anthologies they employed. (JGN)

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 121 , Issue 1: Special Topic: The History of the Book and the Idea of Literature , January 2006 , pp. 170 - 185
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Abbott, Craig. “Modern American Poetry: Anthologies, Classrooms, and Canons.” College Literature 17 (1990): 209–21.Google Scholar
Aiken, Conrad. Rev. of Active Anthology, ed. Ezra Pound. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse Aug. 1934: 276–79.Google Scholar
Aldington, Richard. “Choricus.” Pound, Des Imagistes 7–9.Google Scholar
Aldington, Richard. Preface. Lowell v–ix.Google Scholar
Baldick, Chris. The Modern Movement, 1910–1940. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004.Google Scholar
Beach, Christopher. ABC of Influence: Ezra Pound and the Remaking of American Poetic Tradition. Berkeley: U of California P, 1992.Google Scholar
Calinescu, Matei. Rereading. New Haven: Yale UP, 1993.Google Scholar
Carpenter, Humphrey. A Serious Character: The Life of Ezra Pound. Boston: Houghton, 1988.Google Scholar
Chartier, Roger. Forms and Meanings: Texts, Performances, and Audiences from Codex to Computer. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1995.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dettmer, Kevin J. H., and Watt, Stephen. Marketing Modernisms: Self-Promotion, Canonization, Rereading. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diepeveen, Leonard. The Difficulties of Modernism. New York: Routledge, 2003.Google Scholar
Gage, John T. In the Arresting Eye: The Rhetoric of Imagism. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1981.Google Scholar
Golding, Alan. From Outlaw to Classic: Canons in American Poetry. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1995.Google Scholar
Gordon, David M., ed. Ezra Pound and James Laughlin: Selected Letters. New York: Norton, 1994.Google Scholar
Henderson, Alice Corbin. Rev. of Des Imagistes: An Anthology, ed. Ezra Pound. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse Oct. 1914: 38–40.Google Scholar
Iser, Wolfgang. The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1978.Google Scholar
Kreymborg, Alfred, ed. Others for 1919: An Anthology of the New Verse. New York: Brown, 1920.Google Scholar
Lindberg, Kathryne V. Reading Pound Reading: Modernism after Nietzsche. New York: Oxford UP, 1987.Google Scholar
Lowell, Amy, ed. Some Imagist Poets. New York: Houghton, 1915.Google Scholar
Michelson, Max. Rev. of Catholic Anthology, 1914–1915, ed. Ezra Pound. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse May 1916: 94–96.Google Scholar
Monroe, Harriet. Poets and Their Art. New York: Macmillan, 1926.Google Scholar
Morrison, Mark. The Public Face of Modernism: Little Magazines, Audiences, and Reception, 1905–1920 Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 2001.Google Scholar
Paige, D. D., ed. The Letters of Ezra Pound, 1907–1941. New York: Haskell, 1974.Google Scholar
Perloff, Marjorie. “Anthologies: Bad Texts or ‘Palaces of Wisdom’?” Chronicle of Higher Education 16 Apr. 1999: B6.Google Scholar
Poirier, Richard. “The Difficulties of Modernism and the Modernism of Difficulty.” Critical Essays on American Modernism. New York: Hall, 1992. 104–14.Google Scholar
Pound, Ezra. ABC of Reading. New York: New Directions, 1934.Google Scholar
Pound, Ezra, ed. Active Anthology. London: Faber, 1933.Google Scholar
Pound, Ezra. “The Audience: Part I.” Poetry: A Magazine of Verse Oct. 1914: 29–30.Google Scholar
Pound, Ezra, ed. Catholic Anthology, 1914–1915. London: Mathews, 1915.Google Scholar
Pound, Ezra, trans. The Classic Anthology Defined by Confucius. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1954.Google Scholar
Pound, Ezra, ed. Des Imagistes: An Anthology. New York: Boni, 1914.Google Scholar
Pound, Ezra. “Further Instructions.” Pound, Catholic Anthology 89.Google Scholar
Pound, Ezra. “Hugh Selwyn Mauberley.” American Literature between the Wars, 1914–1945. New York: Norton, 2003. 1288–96. Vol. D of The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Nina Baym, gen. ed. 6th ed. 5 vols.Google Scholar
Pound, Ezra. “I Gather the Limbs of Osiris.” Selected Prose, 1909–1965. New York: New Directions, 1973. 19–44.Google Scholar
Pound, Ezra. “Praefatio.” Pound, Active Anthology 9–27.Google Scholar
Pound, Ezra. Preface. Pound, Profile 9–10.Google Scholar
Pound, Ezra, ed. Profile: An Anthology Collected in MCMXXXI. Milan: Scheiwiller, 1932.Google Scholar
Pound, Ezra, and Spann, Marcella, eds. Confucius to Cummings: An Anthology of Poetry. New York: New Directions, 1964.Google Scholar
Rainey, Lawrence. Institutions of Modernism: Literary Elites and Public Culture. New Haven: Yale UP, 1998.Google Scholar
Steiner, George. “On Difficulty.” “On Difficulty” and Other Essays. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1978. 18–47.Google Scholar
Tate, Allen. Rev. of Profile: An Anthology Collected in MCMXXXI, ed. Ezra Pound. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse Nov. 1932: 111–12.Google Scholar
Untermeyer, Louis, ed. Modern American Poetry: A Critical Anthology. New York: Harcourt, 1919.Google Scholar
Untermeyer, Louis. Preface. Untermeyer, Modern American Poetry 3–29.Google Scholar
Wexler, Joyce Piell. Who Paid for Modernism? Art, Money, and the Fiction of Conrad, Joyce, and Lawrence. Fayetteville: U of Arkansas P, 1997.Google Scholar
Witemeyer, Hugh, ed. Pound/Williams: Selected Letters of Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams. New York: New Directions, 1996.Google Scholar
Yeats, W. B. “The Scholars.” Pound, Catholic Anthology 1.Google Scholar