Ezra Pound: The Solitary Volcano - Softcover

Tytell, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385198701 ISBN 13: 9780385198707

Publisher: Anchor Press - Doubleday, 1988

Synopsis

Unlike other biographical portraits of Ezra Pound, John Tytell’s brilliant and ambitious work offers an interpretive study that boldly confronts the emotional truths and psychological drama that formed this complex and controversial American poet. Neither an apology nor a condemnation, it presents instead a meticulous exploration into the mind and vision of a man who galvanized a generation and challenged an entire literary—and world—establishment. Although he enjoyed little fame in his lifetime, Pound’s notoriety and influence were enormous, as he arrogantly slashed away at convention and almost single-handedly brought about the twentieth-century revolution in poetry known as modernism. Ultimately, outrage and scandal turned his art to madness, and Pound’s last years saw him fall tragically silent.

About this title

About the Author

John Tytell has also written Reading New York, Paradise Outlaws, The Living Theatre, Naked Angels, and Passionate Lives. His work has appeared in the American Scholar, Partisan Review, the New York Times, and Vanity Fair, among other publications. He is professor of English at Queens College (CUNY) and lives in New York City.

From Library Journal

Writing with the ease of a novelist and the precision of a documentarian, Tytell creates a moving and highly readable portrait of that tortured and self-destructive genius, Ezra Pound. Tytell's longest and best-written section deals with Pound's formative years in London (1908-1920). Pound made fruitful contact with Ford Madox Ford, Wyndham Lewis, W. B. Yeats, T. E. Hulme, Robert Frost, and T. S. Eliotand in the process helped to invent Imagism and the Modernist style in general. Tytell brilliantly exposes Pound's irascible and bellicose nature while maintaining sensitivity for Pound's artistry, particularly his making of the Pisan Cantos. In the end, we are left with the "puzzle of a humanist" who read everything in print while misreading the very world around him. Recommended for all larger collections. Daniel L. Guillory, English Dept., Millikin Univ., Decatur, Ill.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Anchor Press - Doubleday
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0385198701
• ISBN 13: 9780385198707
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368