America in Ezra Pound'sPosthumous Cantos

Abstract

I n 20021 published a selection of drafts of The from Ezra Pound's manuscripts, typescripts and magazine publications, under the title Canti postumi.1 Some questioned this title, Cantos, which clearly indicates a posthumous collection of material related to The Cantos. Simi? larly, Wallace Stevens' Opus Posthumous is a book of uncollected and rejected prose and verse written by Stevens over his long life.2 Perhaps I stretched the title by calling cantos what are in fact drafts and fragments of cantos, to use a well-worn phrase, and alternate versions and rejected passages, but this is largely justified by Pound's own practice and by editorial expediency. Thus Canti postumi presents material written by Pound over fifty years, from the Three of 1917 in the Poetry text, to some Lines for Olga that he composed not long before his death in homage to his loyal companion. Therefore, as one reviewer suggested,3 Canti postumi is a sort of Cantos in a nutshell, since we are confronted with Pound's various ways of writing, from the more discursive style of circa 1915, to the visionary allusiveness of the 1920s, to the toughening of the 1930s to the breaking down and recovery of the 1940s, to the atomic style of the 1950s and the final softening as Old Ez approaches death. These are styles that readers of The Cantos are familiar with, as they are familiar with the historical and mythical material that engages Pound. So one could ask why publish these left-overs of the feast of The Cantosl The answer is that The Cantos are finally neither well-known nor widely read, and this volume could be used as a compact guide to their phases; no new poetry by Ezra Pound has appeared since his death,4 only letters and