Pound as Wuz: Recollections and Interpretations

by James Laughlin

1st edn. 8vo. Original silver lettered black cloth (near Fine), dustwrapper (near Fine in protective wrapper, not price clipped). Pp. xii + 203, illus with b&w photos (no inscriptions).

Genres: Biography

216 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

James Laughlin was an American poet and literary book publisher who founded New Directions Publishing.

One of Laughlin's most anthologized works is "Step on His Head", a poem about his relationship with his children.

Reviews

[Julio The Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Ezra Pound was a village explainer. This was excellent if you were a village but if not, not".---Gertrude Stein

Pound's publisher over at New Directions, Ezra, with a boyish sense of humor called "Nude Erections", James Laughlin, reminisces away on Pound composing THE CANTOS in Italy, his friendship, often strained, with the likes of Hemingway, Eliot, and Joyce, legal troubles after the war, the question of Ezra's sanity ("No doubt about it, his mind was in trouble. He thought he'd been brought to Washington D.C. to 'convert the Japs from Shinto to Confucianism''') and, most movingly and troubling, Pound's last years, after his release from the St. Elizabeth bughouse, when Ezra became convinced THE CANTOS "had been botched" and himself a failure, as a poet and human being. This is Pound unrehearsed and naked to the world, told by the man who knew him best. Not for the squeamish but a must for lovers of poetry and all twentieth-century American literature.

[R.K. Cowles · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 1/4 stars

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great read that gives insight into the life of Pound and stories about him.

[Ben Stroup · Rating 4 out of 5]

Best when it gets into Jaz's relationship with E.P.

[Timbabwe Sz]

Essays from an alumnus of the Ezuversity, who knew him before and after The Pisan Cantos