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book reviews Directions to such an undertaking, while Mary de Rachewiltz, expressing in many different ways her "concern... that nothing be lost, nothing distorted," lends her support to the endeavor announced at the end of Richard Taylor's account of "The History and State of the Texts," the production of a variorum rather than a critical edition, a task in which he has been engaged for a number of years. Even more than Taylor, however , Pound's daughter seems wary of any effort "to chop and change." Invoking , instead, "'magnanimity,'" she cites "Bush's reading of The Pisan Cantos, based on a careful textual history of their genetic development," as "an example of" the "openness and largesse of interpretation that emerges from a sustained act of philological attention." Written by some of the most respected scholars whose names have been connected with Pound studies, and displaying a good deal of selfconsciousness about the act of interpretation as well as extensive archival research, these intriguing essays all imply or assume a way of reading that does indeed open up not only the individual text but the mind of the critic and even the discipline itself. It is a way of reading that leads to the questioning of many suppositions about modernist texts, including some of those suppositions (and texts) against which postmodernism has sought to define itself. For as Bush puts it, "criticism that stays close to textual study may be the most effective way to resist easy generalizations about the perniciousness of modernist form," attempting as it does "through a combination of historical and editorial attention to tell not the story but the stories of a text." E. P. Walkiewicz Oklahoma State University Pound & Williams Letters Pound/Williams: Selected Letters of Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams. Hugh Witemeyer, ed. New York: New Directions, 1996. xv + 352 pp. $39.95 AN EDITION of some fifty-six years of personal correspondence between Pound and Williams is an important contribution to understanding each as a highly individualistic person, each as an important creative writer, and both as long-standing personal friends. Of the "approximately 535 items" that have survived, this edition reprints 169 "or slightly more than 30% of the total." The four principles Witemeyer used in selecting the items to be reprinted are as follows: "letters that contain important information about (1) the genesis, authorial intention, and publication history of the works of Pound and Williams; (2) their artistic, 375 ELT 41 : 3 1998 political, and philosophical principles; (3) their reading and their evaluations of the works of others; and (4) significant developments in their lives and their relationship." And he admits that "letters of importance have unavoidably been omitted." Despite this limitation, the value of this edition is beyond question. The letters are divided into five sections: Part One, 1907-1920; Two, 1921-1932; Three, 1933-1941; Four, 1945-1951; and Five, 1952-1963. For each section the editor presents an introduction which gives a useful , succinct discussion of the period in question, highlighting the significant developments in the Pound-Williams friendship. Given the idiosyncrasies that Pound and Williams indulged in or played with: idiosyncrasies of spelling, unconventional spacing and language (Pound is doubtless the more incomprehensible), Witemeyer has done, in most circumstances , an impressive job of presenting the letters in as readable and understandable a format as possible. The correspondence provides valuable insights into the private and personal worlds of both men. Early in the correspondence (21 October 1908) Pound wrote: "I paint my man as I conceive him___Is a painter's art crooked because he paints hunchbacks[?]... As for preaching poetic anarchy or anything else—heaven forbid. I record symptoms as I see 'em. I advise no remedy, I dont [sic] even name the disease usualy [sic]__ as for the 'eyes of too ruthless public'.. [sic] damn their eyes. No art ever yet grew by looking into the eyes of the public ruthless or otherwise. You can obliterate yourself & mirror God, Nature, or Humanity, but if you try to mirror yourself in the eyes of the public woe be unto your art." Continuing on into the 1920s, Pound and Williams debated the role of the American poet...

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