National Poetry Foundation
Review: ON FIRST LOOKING INTO THE LIBRARY OF AMERICA'S POUND
Reviewed Work(s): Ezra Pound: Poems and Translations by Richard Sieburth
Review by: A. DAVID MOODY
Source: Paideuma: Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics, Vol. 33, No. 1 (SPRING
2004), pp. 173-181
Published by: National Poetry Foundation
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24726585
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ON FIRST LOOKING INTO THE LIBRARY OF
A. DAVID MOODY
AMERICA'S POUND
Ezra Pound： Poems and Translations. Edited by Richard S
The Library of America. 2003· 1363 pages. $45 cloth.
This is something new and much to be desired. We have had
The Collected Poems of Ezra Pound，that is the 1920 edition
of all the author himself wished to preserve, to which was
one selection of uncollected poems in 1952 (Faber & Faber),
ably by the author, and an almost entirely different selectio
(New Directions), presumably by decision of the editors. We
The Collected Early Poems7 that is up to Ripostes (1912), pl
lected miscellaneous poems up to 1917. But we have not had
plete poems of Pound (always excepting The Cantos). This a
generously, Pounds translations of Cavalcanti，Arnaut D
Japanese Noh plays, all his Confucian classics，Sophocles，El
Women ofTrachis，and miscellaneous others. Who could ask f
Well, consider this： “the library of america helps to
our nations literary heritage by publishing, and keeping in
authoritative editions.... And then this: “Richard ^leburth select
ed the contents and wrote the chronology and notes for this volume.”
The selection is great, as Ive just been saying. And the chronology
and notes are good. But exactly how does selecting the contents con
nect up with an authoritative edition? One thing is for sure, “the
most comprehensive collection of Pounds poetry . . . and transla
tions ever assembled is the not-to-be-missed opportunity to establish
the authoritative edition. If it fails to do that it will get in the way，pos
sibly for as long as it is kept in print，of anyone else getting a chance
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m
Paideuma 53.j
to do the job. And the job，does it need saying： is not a mere matter
of selecting; it is a job of editing.
So how does this rate as an authoritative edition? It doesn't. It doesn't
even attempt the difficult decisions an editor would have to be tak
ing. First, where should the authority lie? When Arnold made his
selection of Wordsworth, the authority was with him, as it was with
Yeats in his Oxford Book of Modem Verse. But in this case the author
ity has to be with the author，and the editor should be the servant of
his texts. That means the editor has to get involved in the full histo
ries of the texts，from manuscript to final version, and try to keep faith
with what Pound did or allowed to be done with them. Where what
Pound wanted can be known the editor should go with him. There has
to be more to it than just selecting from among the existing editions.
The volume opens with "Hilda's Book，” as edited by Michael King
and attached to H.D.s End to Torment in 1979. Pound of course
never published this “book.” But he did publish some half dozen
poems from it in his early collections, four of them appearing in
more than one early collection. Indeed, through those early collec
tions as many as forty poems were thus recycled. Library of America
(LoA) takes its texts for the six collections from A Lume Spento (1908)
to Ripostes (1912) from Collected Early Poems, again edited by Michael
King; and it follows King in printing each poem “only once, normally
following the text of their first appearance in book form” (CEP 289).
So “The Tree” is given in LoA as part of “Hilda's Book，，，but not as
part of A Lume Spento, nor again as part of Canzoni. King at least
acknowledged that “It would be good to have each of these six vol
umes complete, with their original integrity，” and he gave some help
in his notes to "readers who wish to see [the contents and] the origi
nal order of the poems in each volume.” The reader of LoA is given
rather less help，being merely informed, as for instance in the “Note
on the Texts” for Personae (1909)，that the sixteen poems listed there
have been omitted, with no note of their place in that collection.
LoA fails to recognize，then，let alone to respect the fact that each
of Pounds volumes does have its integrity. He was not recycling
poems simply to bulk out a book. There is a well known letter in
which he urged Elkin Mathews “Do try to think of the book as a
whole”一
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A. David Moody / Review： On First Looking into LoAs Pound x75
Even certain smaller poems, unimportant in themselves have a
function in the book-as-a-whole. This shaping up a book is very
important. It is almost as important as the construction of a play
or a novel. (L/Jf 285)
Bruce Fogelman showed what that meant in practice in his Shapes
of Power： The Development of Ezra Pound's Poetic Sequences (1988).
LoA gives all the poems，but takes away the larger wholes into which
Pound composed them. Four poems are omitted from A Lume Spento，
sixteen from Personae (1909)，eleven from Exultations，four from
Canzoni (the note says only two), one from Ripostes, and one from
Cathay. Only A Quinzaine for This Yule is given in the form Pound
created. The poem omitted from Ripostes is “Salve Pontifex，，一it
appeared first in A Lume Sfiento，and Pound himself would drop it
from Ripostes after 1917. Just the same，in 1912 it was an integral part of
the volume，in there to stand with and against ‘‘The Seafarer.” In the
case of Cathay (1915) it is ‘‘The Seafarer，，that is omitted，and again one
has to say that in 1915 it was integral to the conception of that volume
as a whole. That Pound himself omitted it from Cathay in Lustra and
Personae (1926), ana included it then among his earlier poems, does
complicate the matter. It brings up the sharp question： is this an edi
tion like Pounds, which selected what he wanted to preserve and put
it into a definitive arrangement? Or is it, as it seems to want to be, a
complete edition of the poems as originally published in volume
form? There would be no problem if an extra forty or so pages had
been allowed for the recycled poems to be printed more than once.
For Lustra the New York private edition is used as the copy text，
quite rightly since it is the only complete edition; but it should be
obvious that “The Temperaments" which had been expurgated from
the London editions, and omitted from the ordinary New York edition,
was not in its right place at the very end where John Quinn had
squeezed it in. Both the first proofs of the London edition，and all later
collections in which it appeared, place it among the “Lustra” poems,
following “The Bath Tub.” That is where an editor of LoA should
place it. There is no excuse on the ground of mindless fidelity to the
copy text，since LoA does correct, to its credit, CEFs lapse in putting
“To Τ. H. The Amphora” at the end of Quinzainey as well as making
the corrections listed on page 1254, and occasionally intervening
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Paideuma 53.J
elsewhere. “The Temperaments” is a shocking wrong note as the
final poem of Lustra.
But LoA is still more deeply in error about Lustra. Its note on the
text says that “Pound gathered poems composed in 1913 and 1916 as
well as poems from his earlier books and submitted the manuscript of
Lustra to Elkin Mathews in the spring of 1916.” I have italicized the
error. In fact, the four earlier books which Mathews published were
still in print，and there was no question of poems from those books
being added to his edition of Lustra. But there had been no
American edition of Pounds poems since Provenga (1910)，of which
only 200 copies had been printed, and for that reason the New York
edition was Lustra of Ezra Pound with Earlier Poems. In Knopfs
trade edition at least it is perfectly clear that the earlier poems are not
part of Lustra： “end of lustra " it states on page 120，with a sepa
rate title page following for “poems published before 1911 [and
in 1911 and 1912].” The New York edition also contained “Three
Cantos of a Poem of Some Length，，，and LoA compounds its errors by
treating these also as if they were integral to Lustra. If there is a case
for including them in a “complete poems” there is perhaps a better
case for treating them as integral to the history of The Cantos and so
belonging in a complete edition of that work. Not that I object to
their presence in LoA, but it should be clear that they were never
part of Pounds Lustra project. One other lapse. Cathay (1915) was
included in Lustra (1916 and 1917), with a separate title page, with
four new poems, and marked off by “end of cathay·” LoA,
because it has already given Cathay (1915) as a separate book, prints
only the four new poems within Lustra, with no indication whatso
ever that they had been included as part of Cathay.
LoA is on the whole saved from such errors in its presentation of
the earlier collections by taking its texts from Kings CEP. But of
course one would expect an authoritative edition to be based direct
ly on the original texts，and to provide, as King does，the relevant
publication history, and a record of "substantive variants found in
manuscripts” and of “variants . . . where the poem was revised in
publication after the first published version·” King also gives notes
from "manuscript material in the Pound Archive which is directly
related to the poem·” LoA does not record the variants, or very few，
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A. David Moody / Review： On First Looking into LoAs Pound l77
and is very sparing in what it gives of the related material. Its notes
are mainly glossarial and explanatory. Of making such notes there is
no end and no satisfying every reader, and I am inclined to be un
nigglingly thankful for them. But an edition which takes no account
of the publication history and the variants can't claim to be authori
tative. Moreover，King's edition can't confer authority on LoA，since
its purpose was to print the early poems in their first published state，
whereas a complete final edition must reckon with their later evolu
tion. Even on its own terms，CEP is not beyond question. For
instance, it gives four lines at the end of “Echoes. II” [later “The
Cloak”] which are not in Ripostes, and which it doesn't account for
in its notes. LoA copies those lines without comment.
For Homage to Sextus Propertius and Hugh Selwyn Mauberley the
texts are taken from the first book publication, and no account is
taken of the indispensable work by J. P. Sullivan and John J. Espey
respectively on later developments. These make a real difference for
the former poem in the line-spacing, and for the latter in the line
spacing in I.iv，and in half a dozen significant readings. Also, “Envoi.
(1919)，，is not set off from the rest in italic. (LoAs textual note for
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley gives the publisher as The Egoist Press，
whereas it was John Rodkers Ovid Press.)
If an edition is giving the poems as they were collected into books
一 which would be an excellent idea if it were followed through with
conviction—then what is it to do with the poems which were not so
collected? It might begin by observing the certain distinction
between poems which Pound published but did not collect，and
poems which he never published.
Of the latter，LoA gives ten titles arbitrarily selected ‘‘from the san
trovaso notebook.” But if those，why not the other twenty in
CEP? And again, if these unpublished poems are to be included,
why not CEFs selection 01 poems from miscellaneous manu
scripts" and then what of all the others in the Pound Archive and
elsewhere? In fact the only other unpublished original poems
included are “Redondillas” and “Leviora，which were in the proofs
for Canzoni (1911) but then withdrawn; and two pieces of war verse
of 1914 and 1915 first published in James Longenbach's Stone Cottage
(1988)，then included in the 1990 revised edition of Personae.
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Paideuma 33.1
Selected editions are entitled to select and to privilege certain things,
such as the San Trovaso notebook，over the rest，but a complete edi
tion is not. It would probably be best to exclude from an "authorita
tive edition” poems which the author himself never published. They
call for a separate edition，not least because there is so much materi
al needing to be expertly edited. An appendix would be a possibility,
but it would have to be a very long one.
The question of what to do with the uncollected poems which
Pound did publish is simply where to position them? LoA places its
unpublished poems from the “San Trovaso Notebook’’ and the proofs
of Canzoni just where they belong, that is before A Quinzaine for
This Yule in the one case, and following Canzoni in the other. But it
doesn't manage so well with those that were published. Two poems
of 1912，one of 1915，and two of 1918 are placed together after Hugh
Selwyn Mauberley (1920), simply because they were included in
Umbra： The Early Poems of Ezra Pound (1920). Those poems are
immediately followed by half-a-dozen poems from Blast (1914)，
under the heading “from personae (1926).” Further on there is
another little group of four poems, dating variously from 1912，1914，
and 1938，“from personae (enlarged version, 1949).，，None of the
poems in these three groups belong where they find themselves.
Pound himself, in those collected editions, connected some up with
Ripostes, others with Lustra，and others again he placed in an appen
dix, and his leads might be worth following. Still there remain a large
number of miscellaneous published but uncollected verses and
poems. There would be a good case for distributing these throughout
the volume in groups according to date of first publication. The
same argument would apply to the miscellaneous translations. A
weaker case could also be made for doing as LoA does，and lumping
them all together at the end.
LoA opens its miscellaneous section with “Ezra on the Strike，” a
piece of verse in the Jenkintown Times Chronicle in 1902 which has
been attributed to him, but which he almost certainly did not write.
(By his own account his one contribution to that paper was a limer
ick, in 1896.) There is also a signal departure from the rule of not giv
ing a poem twice： “The Choice，，had already figured in Lustra under
the different title of ‘‘Preference.”
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A. David Moody / Review： On First Looking into LoAs Pound x79
LoAs offering of Pound's translations considerably exceeds that of
even the 1964 enlarged Translations of Ezra Pound. I am amazed，
impressed and delighted that it gives Ή oh7-or Accomplishment (1917)
entire，or almost entire; Confucius： The Great Digest 0 Unwobbling
Pivot (minus the facing ‘Stone Text，)，and The Confucian Analects
(both as of 1951); and the entire Classic Anthology Defined by
Confucius (1954)，though without Achilles Fang's helpful introduc
tion. Together with Cathay，these occupy getting on for half of the
text pages of LoA，and give us very nearly the whole of Pounds
“China” and “Japan” (excepting as always The Cantos). Given such
generosity，especially the inclusion of the prose study of Noh，I
would ask for this much more to complete the offering: The Chinese
Written Character as a Medium for Poetry, and “Immediate Need of
Confucius” (1937) and “MangTsze (The Ethics of Mencius)，，(1938).
Those three essays are not translations，of course，but they are the rel
evant introductions to the translations. (Missing from the Noh is
“Appendix IV” on the music，which in the 1917 edition was said to be
the source for LoA's text—it was omitted only in Translations and
later separate editions. Also missing are the last three paragraphs of
“Appendix III” as they stand in the later editions. The misprint at
Pivot XX.18 not corrected—read is for “in，，in the second sentence.)
With the Cavalcanti translations I would again ask for more，since
we are given so much. The Sonnets and Ballate of 1912，as edited by
David Anderson in Pound's Cavalcanti (1985)，is printed complete,
with its introduction, but without the Italian original en face. That
would not have been the author's wish. Over 300 pages further on，
from Guido Cavalcanti Rime (1932), there are new renderings of five
of the sonnets, a version of “Donna mi Prega，” and its Italian text in
Pound's arrangement—but not en face，which is a missed opportuni
ty. Surely it would be better to have all of the Cavalcanti together；
and why, if none of the original poems are repeated even when
revised，give two versions of those sonnets? None of the ancillary
study and commentary in Rime is given，though it is surely as neces
sary to Pounds Cavalcanti as the study of the Noh to those transla
tions. (In the Literary Essays it takes up about 35 pages.)
Then there is Pounds work on Arnaut Daniel, carried on between his
studies in Cavalcanti. He had a complete version ready for publication
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ι8ο
Paideuma 33.1
with the originals en face by 1912—two publishers agreed to bring it
out，but one went bankrupt and the others new partner didn't want
it. He prepared a completely revised version in late 1917，and that was
lost in the mails somewhere between London and Cleveland，Ohio.
So there never was a "Pounds Arnaut Daniel." There was a chapter
in The Spirit of Romancey early versions of a number of the songs in
“I Gather the Limbs of Osiris” (1911-12), then some of the 1917 ver
sions in one place and another, and finally, so far as Pounds efforts
went, an essay-study incorporating (some whole，some in part only)
several of the later versions with the originals en face. Translations
(1953) printed just the translations and the originals from this essay,
then added in 1964 five more songs but in the early versions. In 1991
Charlotte Ward put together Pound's Translations of Arnaut Daniel，
working from typescript copies of the 1917 versions，and LoA gives
this late editors edition and positions it by date of composition, not
of publication, i.e., as of 1917 and not 1991.I would approve both
these departures from its general practice，while regretting that it
does not give the originals en face. Pounds versions of Daniel were
so much technical exercises and experiments that they can't proper
ly be appreciated unless compared with the originals. There is a
problem over one poem，the “canzon” “Sols sui qu sai”（“I only，and
who elrische pain support，，)，published as part of "Langue dOc in
1919 and 1921，but thereafter published only among the Daniel trans
lations. LoA gives it as part of “Langue dOc”一I rather think it
should be with the translations. And again I don't understand，given
its refusal to print Pound's original poems more than once，LoAs
including early versions of four of the five poems added to the Trans
lations in 1964，when it had already printed the 1917 versions. (One of
the four，referred to in the notes as “this poem，，，is actually just the first
two stanzas of “Lo Ferm Voler.”) In any case it makes no sense to have
these early versions placed over 500 pages after the 1917 versions.
The fifty pages of “Uncollected Poems and Translations" at the
end range from the worth-preserving to barrel-scrapings. The former
could be better placed; the latter are of no account—unless they are
taking up space for which there would be better use.
I miss: Pound's “Plays Modelled on the Noh” (1916); his
‘‘Dialogues of Fontenelle” (1917); his brilliant “divagation，，from
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A. David Moody / Review： On First Looking into LoAs Pound
Laforgues “Salome，” Our Tetrarchal Precieuse"; and his translation
of de Gourmonts “Dust for Sparrows."
I rejoice in the abundance of the book—Sophokles，Elektra (as
edited by Richard Reid in 1989) and Women ofTrachis (as published
in 1956) deserve another mention. I only wish the complete poems
and translations had been edited with intellectual love, that is (after
Spinoza and Pound), with a will to realize a thing in its perfections,
to make the most of its possibilities. Did The Library of America
understand that it was railing to best serve America's heritage when
it commissioned Richard Sieburth to select only already existing
texts? Will it now commission the authoritative edition America
should have?
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