After Stone Cottage: A Packet for Ezra Pound and The Cantos

Abstract

The general contour of the relationship between Yeats and Pound was shaped profoundly during a number of years in the 1910s: Pound arrived in London in 1908 partly to seek out Yeats, who was twenty years his senior and whom he considered a living master of his metier. Pound quickly established himself on the literary scene, was introduced to Yeats by Olivia Shakespear, and become a regular attendee of Yeats’s Monday evenings. Later on Yeats employed Pound as his secretary for three winters from 1913-16 at Stone Cottage, Sussex, dictating his letters to Pound and composing his poetry in close proximity. This period of fruitful collaboration ended with the twin achievements of Yeats’s Per Amica Silentia Lunae (1918) and Pound’s Lustra including “Three Cantos” (1917).