Lecturers repeatedly mention Ezra Pound

>Lecturers repeatedly mention Ezra Pound
>Referred to as one of America's greatest, most controversial writers
>Wrote his (possibly) greatest work recluse in prison
>Suopporter of fascism (that should help here)
>Hemingway was quoted saying his work will be remembered as long as literature is

Yet on Veeky Forums I never see anything by him;
just like TS Eliot.

Is it, that as they are similar to Joyce, they are just too much for Veeky Forums to even pretend to comprehend?
With Joyce you guys can meme his phrases and go through pages of not understanding anything hoping next chaper will be better.
But when faced with The Wasteland?
After 5 minutes you are left empty handed and exposed for the unintelligent pseud you really are because you can make absolutely nothing of it.

Veeky Forums doesn't fully understand the paramount pinnacle of true literature, does it?

Other urls found in this thread:

bartleby.com/265/299.html
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

Well if you want to see posts about Pound you should make a thread about him that isn't this one. I'll gladly contribute.

>He do the police in different voices

Who gives a fuck

I like his rendition of the Seafarer.

I've had several intelligent discussions on the waste land (two words) here.
The trouble is not very many people have read it, and it's so rich that someone has to ask a specific question. To discuss it in its entirety would be impractical or impossible in this format. Same thing as the cantos.

He was the King of Pseuds, no discernable talent.
The only people that are attracted towards him are pseuds

>the waste land (two words)
ehhh Typo

How recent were your "intellifent discussion" threads?
recent enough for this archive or further back?
Just liek a read through it perhaps

Unfortunately, Ezra Pound never wrote for the unwashed masses. All of his poems require extreme erudition and poetic, grammatical and metrical awareness. Basically, these were poems written for the crème de la crème of early 20th century Europe's intelligentsia.
What does this mean? That virtually no one here is able to read these poems and actually give an informed opinion about them. These are works that requires an amount of knowledge that is simply no present here on Veeky Forums.
For the same reason you can disregard 99% of what you read about Joyce on Veeky Forums, and at best, enjoy the memes and the funny shitposting.

I'm not sure, I've never used the archives. Might as well just do it here and now. What about the waste land should we talk about?
Let's make lit great again.

I like how he looked like a mountain wizard in his later years.

LOQUITUR: En Betrans de Born.
Dante Alighieri put this man in hell for that he was a stirrer-up of strife.
Eccovi!
Judge ye!
Have I dug him up again?

The scene is his castle, Altaforte. “Papiols” is his jongleur. “The
Leopard,” the device of Richard (Cœur de Lion).

I

Damn it all! all this our South stinks peace.
You whoreson dog, Papiols, come! Let’s to music!
I have no life save when the swords clash.
But ah! when I see the standards gold, vair, purple, opposing
And the broad fields beneath them turn crimson,
Then howl I my heart nigh mad with rejoicing.

II

In hot summer have I great rejoicing
When the tempests kill the earth’s foul peace,
And the light’nings from black heav’n flash crimson,
And the fierce thunders roar me their music
And the winds shriek through the clouds mad, opposing,
And through all the riven skies God’s swords clash.

III

Hell grant soon we hear again the swords clash!
And the shrill neighs of destriers in battle rejoicing,
Spiked breast to spiked breast opposing!
Better one hour’s stour than a year’s peace
With fat boards, bawds, wine and frail music!
Bah! there’s no wine like the blood’s crimson!

IV

And I love to see the sun rise blood-crimson.
And I watch his spears through the dark clash
And it fills all my heart with rejoicing
And prys wide my mouth with fast music
When I see him so scorn and defy peace,
His lone might ’gainst all darkness opposing.

V

The man who fears war and squats opposing
My words for stour, hath no blood of crimson
But is fit only to rot in womanish peace
Far from where worth’s won and the swords clash
For the death of such sluts I go rejoicing;
Yea, I fill all the air with my music.

VI

Papiols, Papiols, to the music!
There’s no sound like to swords swords opposing,
No cry like the battle’s rejoicing
When our elbows and swords drip the crimson
And our charges ’gainst “The Leopard’s” rush clash.
May God damn for ever all who cry “Peace!”

VII

And let the music of the swords make them crimson
Hell grant soon we hear again the swords clash!
Hell blot black for always the thought “Peace”!

>tfw you try to guide ppl into modernisms heights, but your ex-bf memes attention away from your unparalleled mind

true

>All of his poems require extreme erudition and poetic, grammatical and metrical awareness

not really, but they're not exactly accessible either, if you want to feel superior to people just say you understand Ashbery.

him reading this is sublime

OK. I know how I ranted about Veeky Forums lacking the ability to truly understand these artists and that is sort of true to myself.
I would much rather follow a discussion for now and be able to drop in my personal opinion or a different interpretation of a verse of refrence.
Going head first into this now, I wouldn't be able to keep up.
That's why I was asking for the thread where you must have exhanged personal impressions.
I have only attempted to discuss the poem with one friend after being left unsatisfied with looking up too much online and then I felt even more unfullfiled after that short, useless discourse.

I am sorry.
I feel really pathetic right now.

what do you think of the fact that he chose the rose as the symbol of 'generation' in the four quartets with and explicitly positive connotation, while choosing April (the beginning of a generative season) as 'the cruelest month'. Do you think his change in theology affected this alone? Do you disagree with my premise that the rose is generation?

.>while choosing April (the beginning of a generative season) as 'the cruelest month'

being in this wasteland of course. I'm wanting to look at the two in contrast

Proud to call myself redpilled when he was one of us

Cringeworthy. He was truly the LARPer of poets

I'll read it again and come back to you in a bit.

Some things to think about when you read it:

Eliots attitude towards European tradition and history (allusions to all the historical art, different languages, etc.)

Eliots view of the modern world (without faith in God, sex without love, etc.).

How the fragmented and damaged nature of society in the aftermath of WW1 is reflected in the fragmented style of the poem.

Does Eliot leave the POSSIBILITY of redemption and rebirth?

there are eliot and pound threads all the time are you retarded

lurk more newfag

This

One of the main reoccurring motifs in the poem is lust and sex without love. Another is forgetting religious dogmas in favor of worldly pleasures.
"The fire sermon" was preached by the buddah against the fires of lust and other passions that prevent their regeneration. This theme is seen in both eastern and western philosophy. That is, the path to redemption is through maintaining discipline and controlling lust.
In "what the thunder said" we see the Fisher king in an arid land contemplating whether he should sacrifice himself for his country - then rain would probably come. This, to me, seems to again show that if we are able to sacrifice and restrain ourselves we can hope to regain a beautiful world.

In short if we can revive morality, discipline and benevolence we can hope for redemption.

>Does Eliot leave the POSSIBILITY of redemption and rebirth
I think he does in both The Waste Land and 4Q, but this is a much stronger upswing in the latter.
t. question poser

I agree, but in the hollow men I don't see any possibility for redemption. I think that was eliots most pessimistic poem. I think that if he didn't convert to Christianity shortly after writing that poem he would have killed himself.

I can agree with that, maybe not the suicide, but the rest of it. The Waste Land (imo) has his most terrifying moment
>PLEASE HURRY UP ITS TIME
but the simple acknowledgement of seasons (and by extension cyclical nature) prevents me of believing of a completely bitter T.S. Eliot. I must admit growing up Pentecostal (not anymore, but not super important) colors my reading of him tremendously (as it does William Blake).

shut the fuck up

why?

Filling pages with endless references is patrician now?

I guess you can't read.

>you will never learn occitan just to read a few poets like ezra recommends

I reference the Cantos all the fucking time, OP.

They're undoubtedly a foundational work if you think, as patricians do, that there exists room for syncretic understanding between Buddhism and Christianity and Confucianism and Republican Nationalism.

how insecure do you have to be to assume that if ppl don't like your favorite poet then they're not smart enough to 'get it'. pound is dry af, if u want obscure excess then read the symbolists

I know this feel
>tfw ABCs of Reading just makes you want to read less

bump

whats hard to understand about ashbery

it's gorgeously picked meticulously structured words subjectively describing really vague experiences or concepts

it's very nice

>>PLEASE HURRY UP ITS TIME
This was an amazing part until I read several works on The Waste Land and learned that Eliot actually meant this as a bartender's cry for everyone to leave or something. I regretted ever reading those elucidations because the poem lost its impact.

wtf pound is spoken about here all the time

Yeah, someone makes a thread every week or so and gets either one or two replies.

You know it can mean more than one thing right? Like because they are in a bar it's literally the bartender calling last call, but in respect to the poem it can also have figurative meaning, which is definitely what Eliot meant to do.

Yes, I agree with you; but I am an autist and those lines will never be as apocalyptic as the first time I read them because I keep seeing bartenders.

Veeky Forums is extraordinarily poor at discussing poetry.......apart from "post your own poems" threads which are dire.

bump

Oh woah, who'd a thunk an extremely personal and impressionistic artform wouldn't take well to a fast moving forum of anonymous posters

>Suopporter of fascism (that should help here)

>Yet on Veeky Forums I never see anything by him;

There's a reason why we don't talk about him, he's a supporter of fascism and Veeky Forums doesn't tolerate fascists.

He gets more threads than my man Housman does.

And because that son of a bitch,
Franz Josef of Austria. . . . . .
And because that son of a bitch Napoléon Barbiche…
They put Aldington on Hill 70, in a trench
dug through corpses
With a lot of kids of sixteen,
Howling and crying for their mamas,
And he sent a chit back to his major:
I can hold out for ten minutes
With my sergeant and a machine-gun.
And they rebuked him for levity.
And Henri Gaudier went to it,
and they killed him,
And killed a good deal of sculpture,
And ole T.E.H. he went to it,
With a lot of books from the library,
London Library, and a shell buried ‘em in a dug-out,
And the Library expressed its annoyance.
And a bullet hit him on the elbow
…gone through the fellow in front of him,
And he read Kant in the Hospital, in Wimbledon,
in the original,
And the hospital staff didn’t like it.

And Wyndham Lewis went to it,
With a heavy bit of artillery,
and the airmen came by with a mitrailleuse,
And cleaned out most of his company,
and a shell lit on his tin hut,
While he was out in the privy,
and he was all there was left of that outfit.

Windeler went to it,
and he was out in the Ægæan,
And down in the hold of his ship
pumping gas into a sausage,
And the boatswain looked over the rail,
down into amidships, and he said:
Gees! look a’ the Kept’n,
The Kept’n’s a-gettin’ ‘er up.

And Ole Captain Baker went to it,
with his legs full of rheumatics,
So much so he couldn’t run,
so he was six months in hospital,
Observing the mentality of the patients.

And Fletcher was 19 when he went to it,
And his major went mad in the control pit,
about midnight, and started throwing the ‘phone about
And he had to keep him quiet
till abut six in the morning,
And direct that bunch of artillery.

And Ernie Hemingway went to it,
too much in a hurry,
And they buried him for four days.

I am a fascist, though. I always considered Veeky Forums an overall right wing board with just a little bit more lefties than /pol/.

i think the true Veeky Forums position is one that is self-aware of ideological bias but still attempts to distance itself from blanketed ideological standpoints and instead appreciate works of aesthetic quality while simultaneously implementing that same bias in self-conscious way eg wilde's use of socialism or pound here's use of fascism.

understanding these contexts allows one to get more out of the work instead of focusing entirely on what one disagrees with.

I read a fascinating book about his writings on and relationship with music.

Get out you filthy materialist. Veeky Forums is a Catholic-Existentialist board and beyond your petty left and right

what is Veeky Forums's favourite Pound poem then

HILDAAAAAAAA

in a station of the metro

mad?

Pound is the king pseud. He literally pseuded his way into patriciandom, so that yes, he is patrician, but not to the extent that he is pretending to be. He was also a proto-DFW, the prince of pseuds, thinking that complexity, tryhard attempts at playing around with form, and "le references" made up for his fundamental lack of discernable talent. His direhard fans are the worst, like OP, always saying "you don't like him because you didn't get X reference, dumbass," when they only got the reference in the first place from a guidebook or annotation that they had to read alongside the poem. They are also usually insecure undergrads.

why would I be? it's a fine poem

The easiest one to understand, lmao.

ask

Nice projections, my '''''friend'''''.

I was playing with you. You did say >mad desu, I had to. I like that one too.

Also, The River-Merchant’s Wife is another easy one by Pound, but it's just his translation of Li Po so that is why. Still nice.

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chōkan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.
At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever, and forever.
Why should I climb the look out?

At sixteen you departed
You went into far Ku-tō-en, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.

You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me.
I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Chō-fū-Sa.

I consider this one of the most beautiful poems ever. I love the line "I desired my dust to be mingled with yours/forever and forever, and forever".

Also from Cathay, I really like 'The Exile's Letter', also a Li Po translation.
bartleby.com/265/299.html

I've read quite a bit of Pound and some secondary material on him for academic reasons, and I'll just say that, excepting to imagist work, his stuff is both inaccessible and more famous for being groundbreaking than being amazing. Parts of his work are of the highest quality, but he has no one definitive great work.

He is more significant as a ground-breaking artist (sort of like Miller, Samuel Butler, etc) literary theorist, editor, and critic than he is as a poet. And his significance in that area is massive. He's what Maxwell Perkins is to American fiction.

Usura

I think his work is genuinely great, but he's perhaps more important for promoting the modernist movement and a lot of other writers from that era, like H.D., T.S. Eliot and Wyndham Lewis, etc

J O Y C E
O
Y
C
E

Such as? What do I need to enjoy Pound?

What ground did he break?
You're getting awfully close to admitting he was a charlatan with no real talent

In a hundred years people will remember pound more for his translations of Confucius than anything else.

The cantos have moments of transcendence but ultimately failed because his reach exceeded his grasp. The man literally tried to encompass all of literature into the work and it fizzled out in much the same way as his life.

He was an imminent figure in modernism due to his ability to recognize the talent of others more so than due to his own talent.

Stop shilling this talentless prick

how is he "talentless", I realise the Modernists derided him a lot, but as "simple" as his poems were, there's a lot of emotional depth. plus he's regarded as one of the greatest Latin scholars to exist.

You're a pretentious faggot OP. Instead of making a thread where you just bitch, you should have made a thread where you actually say something of value.

Fuck off, ya twat.

>Veeky Forums doesn't fully understand the paramount pinnacle of true literature, does it?
Veeky Forums doesn't read. it should be renamed /b/ooks

>>>/plebbit/

Who?

This really touched me, don't know why.

Same

The last line four lines do it for me. They are so innocent desu.

`Terence, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There's nothing much amiss, 'tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well, the horned head:
We poor lads, 'tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow.
Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time
Moping melancholy mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.'

Why, if 'tis dancing you would be,
There's brisker pipes than poetry.
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man.
Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot
To see the world as the world's not.
And faith, 'tis pleasant till 'tis past:
The mischief is that 'twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where,
And carried half way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I've lain,
Happy till I woke again.
Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world, it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet,
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew.

Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure,
I'd face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.
'Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale
Is not so brisk a brew as ale:
Out of a stem that scored the hand
I wrung it in a weary land.
But take it: if the smack is sour
The better for the embittered hour;
It will do good to heart and head
When your soul is in my soul's stead;
And I will friend you, if I may,
In the dark and cloudy day.

There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all that sprang to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white's their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
-- I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.

Even the Christian beauty
Defects—after Samothrace;
We see to kalon
Decreed in the market place.

Faun’s flesh is not to us,
Nor the saint’s vision.
We have the press for wafer;
Franchise for circumcision.

All men, in law, are equals.
Free of Peisistratus,
We choose a knave or an eunuch
To rule over us.

A bright Apollo,

tin andra, tin eroa, tina theon,
What god, man, or hero
Shall I place a tin wreath upon?

IV
These fought, in any case,
and some believing, pro domo, in any case ...

Some quick to arm,
some for adventure,
some from fear of weakness,
some from fear of censure,
some for love of slaughter, in imagination,
learning later ...

some in fear, learning love of slaughter;
Died some pro patria, non dulce non et decor” ...

walked eye-deep in hell
believing in old men’s lies, then unbelieving
came home, home to a lie,
home to many deceits,
home to old lies and new infamy;

usury age-old and age-thick
and liars in public places.

Daring as never before, wastage as never before.
Young blood and high blood,
Fair cheeks, and fine bodies;

fortitude as never before

frankness as never before,
disillusions as never told in the old days,
hysterias, trench confessions,
laughter out of dead bellies.

V
There died a myriad,
And of the best, among them,
For an old bitch gone in the teeth,
For a botched civilization.

Charm, smiling at the good mouth,
Quick eyes gone under earth’s lid,

For two gross of broken statues,
For a few thousand battered books.

OP's pic always really reminds me of someone

So much of this work is just absurd at first glance. Feeling a little unwashed and massive at the moment.

Veeky Forums is apolitical, everyone summed together. It's an area of free speech and free thought.

/pol/ is not Veeky Forums, so I'm not counting them.

He is patrician as fuck, but actually understanding much of his work requires a classical greek/latin education far beyond what meager skill Veeky Forums brings to reading.
His fascism was the apex of an avant-garde life; Pound was truly red pilled. /pol/ would love him.

Anybody ever watch that Ross McElwee documentary about that high school or middle school teacher in South Carolina or Georgia who as a young woman corresponded with old man Pound and made it seem like they had some sort of relationship? Charleen, I think.

with usura hath no man a house of good stone

I've tried reading his stuff, but have always found it tiresome.
As for him being a supporter of fascism, that just makes me think he was an idiot.
If you want to try to change my mind, post some good stuff by him.

He didn't write any good poetry. ABC of Reading is nice, though.

Whenever I write something like this, I get called a pseud by you faggots.

>something like this
sure you do, sure you do

His works and less so Eliots were quite esoteric and cryptic

He is held in such regard for being innovation and ushering in a new age of poetry as well as coaching some of the heavyweights of modern literature

Yeah, because no one here has written poems with Greek and Latin words thrown in to seem more erudite than they are... It's not that big a deal, especially since Pound used the baby's first Latin quote and Greek words you can understand without even speaking Greek.

>tin andra, tin eroa, tin theon
Seriously?

Are you suggesting that it would be hard to write something like ?
Kek. Any half-intelligent man could write that.

>unwashed
Dropped, because you think in cliches