New Selected Poems and Translations

Whatever one might think of Pound's legacy—both political and poetical—there's practically no debate about the fact that in order to understand literature from modernism onward, Pound must be reckoned with. Until now, to get a concise but complete idea of Pound's oeuvre—spanning the mythy free verse of A Lume Spento (1908), which seeks "many a new thing understood" to the last, war-wracked cantos of the late 1960s, which plead, "let the Gods forgive what I/ have made"—was all but impossible, requiring the purchase of a thin, confusingly organized Selected Poems put together by Pound; a copy of Pound's selection and re-envisioning of his short poems, Personae; and another slim, oddly curated volume of selected Cantos. At last we have what we've needed for more than half a century: a career-spanning selection gathering all of Pound's major verse, offering both the academic and pleasure reader more than enough Pound to get them going. Sieburth, scholar, translator and editor of the Library of America volume of Pound's Poems and Translations, has removed the distortions of Pound's own preferences in favor of a long view of the high points of Pound's career, and included helpful notes and commentary. This will become the standard Pound. (Oct.)