Ezra Pound's Poetry

Within this collection of poems, Pound sought to trace the world's history using a Ulyssean/Dantesque framework. The poet within the narrative journeys through the myths, political upheavals and religious systems of the world in a decisively iconoclastic and unapologetically erudite style. The reader, traveling with the poet through the detritus of civilization, confronts an elegiac vision in the Cantos: a postmortem in which the poet addresses both the totality of civilization's intellectual efforts and his own creeping mortality. Even so, the poems are not despairing. The failure of politics and religion, the failure of humanity to live up to its promise, does not engender in the poet an existential or absurdist crisis. Pound does not reject the world' but laments it. W

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ays a major thematic role in Canto LXXXI as well, makes its appearance here in a comic sense: That also was an era (Mr. W. Runmel) an era of croissants. Then an era of pains au lait and the eucalyptus bobble is missing. Come Pan, Nino! (Pound, Canto LXXX 507). To describe a period of time as an "era of croissants" is a devilish and coy business. Pound has a sense of history about him, preferring to define the grandiose pretensions of the world's course with specific relation to the type of food he enjoys. More ironic is the comment regarding the eucalyptus bobble: "On the day that Pound was arrested by the partisans, he picked up a seed of the eucalyptus tree on the salite carried it as a good luck charm (Terrell 429). Now, his luck is gone. He has the memory of a grand era of bread, but the good fortune that was symbolized by the eucalyptus seed has flown. Fond memories of bread are replaced by momentary absence of hope. Another passage within Canto LXXX that contains much ironic comment is the section discussing the Irish revolution of 1916 and Yeats' eventual election to that country's senate. Pound plants his tongue firmly in his cheek when he says "The problem after any revolution is what to do with/your g
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Canto LXXX, Canto LXXXI, Eastern Western, Pisan Cantos, LXXX Pound, Agricole Pound, Confucian Love, II Faced, Pound Responded, Ezra Pound, canto lxxxi, canto lxxx, pound canto, pound canto lxxxi, ironic comment, pisan cantos, pound canto lxxx, terrell 429, lxxxi 535, ezra pound, canto lxxxi 535, canto lxxx 510, conclusion canto lxxxi, live tradition, ideals reality,
Approximate Word count = 2569
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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