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EP to LU: Nine Letters Written to Louis Untermeyer by Ezra Pound
46 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1963
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About the author
Ezra Pound
525 books1,039 followersEzra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet, critic and intellectual who was a major figure of the Modernist movement in early-to-mid 20th century poetry.
Pound's The Cantos contains music and bears a title that could be translated as The Songs—although it never is. Pound's ear was tuned to the motz et sons of troubadour poetry where, as musicologist John Stevens has noted, "melody and poem existed in a state of the closest symbiosis, obeying the same laws and striving in their different media for the same sound-ideal - armonia."
In his essays, Pound wrote of rhythm as "the hardest quality of a man's style to counterfeit." He challenged young poets to train their ear with translation work to learn how the choice of words and the movement of the words combined. But having translated texts from 10 different languages into English, Pound found that translation did not always serve the poetry: "The grand bogies for young men who want really to learn strophe writing are Catullus and François Villon. I personally have been reduced to setting them to music as I cannot translate them." While he habitually wrote out verse rhythms as musical lines, Pound did not set his own poetry to music.
Pound's The Cantos contains music and bears a title that could be translated as The Songs—although it never is. Pound's ear was tuned to the motz et sons of troubadour poetry where, as musicologist John Stevens has noted, "melody and poem existed in a state of the closest symbiosis, obeying the same laws and striving in their different media for the same sound-ideal - armonia."
In his essays, Pound wrote of rhythm as "the hardest quality of a man's style to counterfeit." He challenged young poets to train their ear with translation work to learn how the choice of words and the movement of the words combined. But having translated texts from 10 different languages into English, Pound found that translation did not always serve the poetry: "The grand bogies for young men who want really to learn strophe writing are Catullus and François Villon. I personally have been reduced to setting them to music as I cannot translate them." While he habitually wrote out verse rhythms as musical lines, Pound did not set his own poetry to music.
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January 31, 2020
This is a short but lively exchange between Ezra Pound and Louis Untermeyer; two men who corresponded with each other during the 1930s.
While the letters themselves are not that revealing, this book is worth reading because it contains some of the "historical facts" that Pound shared to "put the record straight" - which is the closest that Pound ever came to writing his own CV perhaps.
To sum up, not a terribly exciting book but a quick read for Pound scholars who may learn a thing or two from it.
While the letters themselves are not that revealing, this book is worth reading because it contains some of the "historical facts" that Pound shared to "put the record straight" - which is the closest that Pound ever came to writing his own CV perhaps.
To sum up, not a terribly exciting book but a quick read for Pound scholars who may learn a thing or two from it.
Displaying 1 of 1 review