**Here in one volume is the biggest and best collection of Pound's
poetry (excepting his long poem The Cantos) and translations ever
assembled.
**
Ranging from the text of the handmade first collection Hilda's Book (a
gift to the poet H.D.) to his late translations of Horace, and
containing dozens of items previously unavailable, Poems and
Translations reveals the diversity and richness of a body of work
marked by daring invention and resonant music.
In such early volumes as Ripostes, Cathay, Lustra, and Hugh
Selwyn Mauberley--as surely as in his later magisterial versions of
The Confucian Odes and the Sophoclean dramas Women of Trachis and
Elektra--Pound followed his own directive to "make it new," opening
fresh formal pathways while exploring the most ancient traditions.
Before, during, and after the controversies and catastrophes of his
public career (culminating in his long residence in a Washington mental
hospital while under indictment for treason), Pound remained capable of
rare technical brilliance and indelible lyricism.
Here are the lush early lyrics, echoing Browning and the Troubadours;
the chiseled free verse of such masterpieces as "The Return," "Near
Perigord," and "Homage to Sextus Propertius"; the dazzling translations
that led Eliot to call Pound "the inventor of Chinese poetry for our
time." The Chinese verse translations are supplemented by Pound's
versions of the Confucian prose texts--The Analects, The Great
Digest, and The Unwobbling Pivot--which he saw as crucial to his
literary aims. An extensive chronology offers guidance to Pound's
tumultuous life, and detailed notes clarify the many recondite
allusions.
LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization
founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by
publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most
significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than
300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in
length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are
printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
