The Pound Era

by Hugh Kenner

Book Overview

"Hugh Kenner's The Pound Era could as well be known as the Kenner era, for there is no critic who has more firmly established his claim to valuable literary property than has Kenner to the first three decades of the 20th century in England. Author of pervious studies of Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Wyndham Lewis and Pound (to name a few), Kenner bestrides modern literature if not like a colossus then at least a presence of formidable proportions. A new book...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520024273
• ISBN13: 9780520024274
• Release Date: September 1973
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 624 Pages
• Weight: 2.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 5.9" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Becoming Pound

For years I didn't get Pound, and I once asked a friend if the Emperor had no clothes. "No, but to get Pound you have to become Pound," she said. That remains one of the truest things I've heard about Pound, and about the modern poetic he inspired. From the brave spirits who hope to apprehend his writing, Pound demands a total commitment to his manner of thinking, his myriad languages, his vast reading, his eccentric economic/social theories, his storehouse of memories, and the evolution of his ideas over nearly a century. What he brought to poetry was the idea that poems aren't ornamented expressions of deep feeling, but precise instruments for exploring politics, religion, history, economics, science and just about everything human. Hugh Kenner came closer to being Pound than anyone (though Peter Makin gives him a good run for his money), and "The Pound Era" isn't so much a work of literary criticism as it is an intricate daybook, or maybe a modern novel, on coming to terms with the demands Pound makes on a reader. It's a one-of-a-kind study that should be read and re-read by anyone even half-interested in Pound's achievement. But it also (to my mind at least) shares some of the Master's flaws as Kenner makes great, sometimes showy, occasionally mannered paratactic leaps between seemingly unrelated details to convey a picture of Pound's age. It's well worth looking past the stylistic excesses though for Kenner's unparalleled explication of one of the best known and least understood 20th-century poets.

A Masterful Examination of an Important Time

Would that we all had "readers" as sympathetic as Kenner is to Pound. I've returned to this book and learned something new each time. Its importance cannot be underestimated. Simply amazing.A footnote: The Fine Arts Museum at the Legion of Honor here in SF had a few years ago an exhibit of Modern Sculpture, including the Hierartic Head. It was the highlight of the year.

The best of its genre

What's all the fuss about cranky ol' Ezra Pound? This may answer that question. It may also be the finest piece of literary criticism in the language, the best work of a man who is not merely a critic of the modernist writers, but a great modernist himself. No one who loves 20th Century poetry, fiction and visual art should miss this book.

A work of criticism that is itself a work of art

Parts of this book will boggle most first-time readers, being liberally strewn with allusions and complex cross-references. But persistence is well worth it; sample "The Invention of China" or "Words Set Free" to see some of the most beautiful studies of poetry and poetic translation ever done. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It brings the discussion of literature to an entirely different level, abandoning "analysis" for a poetic, transcendental inquiry. A must read.