The Cambridge Companion to Ezra Pound ed. by Ira B. Nadel (review)

humanities 463 The radical/conservative dichotomy that emerges in Bright's discussion of 1919 in fact pervades this volume. Social identities exist in dynamic tension, and there is no immediate reason to view other identities as negating class or as being necessarily conservative. Nor, as Peter Bailey has pointed out, can the apparent emulation of middle-class respectability easily be read as a form of embourgeoisment. One can even ask whether the decline of the working-class electoral movement in the 1930s reflected a decline in labour identity or simply a growing frustration with those politicians who claimed to represent labour. David Bright has constructed a fascinating tableau of Calgary labour, but one that can be read quite differently. (JAMES NAYLOR) Ira B. Nadel, editor. The Cambridge Companion to Ezra Pound Cambridge University Press. xxxii, 318. US $19.95 Ezra Pound's was a remarkably productive, influential, and turbulent life. Whether he was living in London, Paris, Rapallo, or St Elizabeths, he managed to produce and/or facilitate the production of important modernist work B so much so that Literary Modernism ( `The Pound Era,' Hugh Kenner called it in 1971) is largely a movement conceived, nurtured, demarcated, and shaped through Pound's propagandist efforts. As H.D. remarked in End to Torment, Pound `gave extravagantly.' During his London years he launched the careers of not only H.D. but also Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, and many others, and helped W.B. Yeats`modernize' himself. His managing of H.D.'s poetic career, remembered by`Dryad' in End to Torment, is typical. While sitting in the British Museum tea room and pouring over H.D.'s minimalist poems, he pronounced H.D.'s `Hermes of the Ways' real `poetry,' cut out a line here, shortened a line there, made the decision to forward it to Harriet Monroe to be published in Poetry, and `scrawled ``H.D. Imagiste'' at the bottom of the page,' launching thus a poetic movement (conceivably this century's most important poetic movement) and H.D.'s career at the same time. While in Paris he performed his masterful `caesarian operation' on The Waste Land, turning, in Eliot's words, `a jumble of good and bad passages into a poem,' something Eliot recognized in his famous dedication: `For Ezra Pound / il miglior fabbro.' It was more difficult for Pound to exert his influence from the Italian seaside resort town of Rapallo, but he managed to do so nonetheless, especially through his voluminous correspondence. During his twelve-and-a-half-year stint at the St Elizabeths `bughouse' in Washington, DC, Pound presided over a literary salon and exerted more influence on an international literary community than ever before. 464 letters in canada 1999 As Ira B. Nadel, the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Ezra Pound, says in the opening of his lucid introduction, `Understanding Ezra Pound has never been easy. His erudition and experimentation, not to say his orneriness, have constantly challenged readers.' Over the years Pound has attracted his share of essay collections, and there are certainly numerous introductory monographs on specific aspects of his work. The Cambridge Companion differs from earlier collections and most monographs in that it purports to be a critical introduction to Pound the man and his entire œuvre. As such, it deals with Pound the man, poet, critic, editor, anthologist , literary propagandist, patron of the arts, translator, dramatist, librettist, political and economic thinker, fascist, and anti-Semite. Edited with energy and imagination, this volume achieves considerable staying power because it gathers sound essays by an international all-star cast of Pound scholars. The collection is anchored by Nadel's subtle and satisfying introductory exposition of several topoi central to the poet's work. Nadel takes us quickly through the biography; the early poetics and poetry; the history and importance of The Cantos; the poet's influence and the critical tradition and reception of his work; and finally, a sensible and reliable overview of the collection. After reading a book like this, one could always complain about omissions (for example, why are there no chapters on Pound and religion or Pound's prosody), or about the choice of contributors (was...