Lustra: "Poetry must be as well written as prose"

By Ezra Pound

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was born on October 30th, 1885 in Hailey, Idaho.

Pound lived a complicated life that is, in parts, difficult to understand and reconcile with. He was an early founder of the Imagist Movement and was instrumental in helping to shape and publish the works of such luminaries as T.S Eliot, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway and Robert Frost.

Much of his life was spent abroad initially working on various literary magazines as he attempted to start his own career as a poet. However his ideas tended to change radically and these are clearly charted in his numerous books of poems that he published.

After the First World War he became a strident critic of International capitalism. Unlike many who moved to the left Pound moved more and more to the right. He began to write various economic tracts and eventually was a supporter of both Mussolini and Hitler. During the war he recorded and aired several hundred radio broadcasts for the Italian Government, many of them vile in content and virulently anti-Semitic.

Arrested by American forces on charges of treason he spent months in isolation before, being deemed unfit to stand trial, was placed in St Elizabeth’s Psychiatric Hospital for 12 years.

During this time he also worked on his masterwork, The Pisan Cantos, published in 1948 and very controversially awarded the Bollingen Prize in 1949 by the Library of Congress.

He was eventually released from St Elizabeth’s in 1958 and returned to Italy to live until his death in 1972.

"VOCAT ÆSTUS IN UMBRAM"

Nemesianus Ec. IV.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Portable Poetry
• Release date: Jan 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781787376977

Book preview

Lustra by Ezra Pound

Definition—LUSTRUM: an offering for the sins of the whole people, made by the censors at the expiration of their five years of office.

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was born on October 30th, 1885 in Hailey, Idaho.

Pound lived a complicated life that is, in parts, difficult to understand and reconcile with.  He was an early founder of the Imagist Movement and was instrumental in helping to shape and publish the works of such luminaries as T.S Eliot, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway and Robert Frost.

Much of his life was spent abroad initially working on various literary magazines as he attempted to start his own career as a poet. However his ideas tended to change radically and these are clearly charted in his numerous books of poems that he published.

After the First World War he became a strident critic of International capitalism.  Unlike many who moved to the left Pound moved more and more to the right.  He began to write various economic tracts and eventually was a supporter of both Mussolini and Hitler.  During the war he recorded and aired several hundred radio broadcasts for the Italian Government, many of them vile in content and virulently anti-Semitic.

Arrested by American forces on charges of treason he spent months in isolation before, being deemed unfit to stand trial, was placed in St Elizabeth’s Psychiatric Hospital for 12 years.

During this time he also worked on his masterwork, The Pisan Cantos, published in 1948 and very controversially awarded the Bollingen Prize in 1949 by the Library of Congress.

He was eventually released from St Elizabeth’s in 1958 and returned to Italy to live until his death in 1972. 

Index of Contents

Tenzone

The Condolence

The Garret

The Garden

Ortus

Salutation

The Spring

Albâtre

Causa

A Pact

Surgit Fama

Preference

Dance Figure

April

Gentildonna

The Rest

Les Millwin

Further Instructions

A Song of the Degrees

Ite

Dum Capitolium Scandet

καλὀν

The Study in Aesthetics

The Bellaires

Salvationists

Arides

The Bath Tub

Amitiés

To Dives

Ladies

Coda

Ancora

Dompna pois de me no’us cal

The Coming of War: Actaeon

After Ch’u Yuan

Liu Ch’e

Fan-piece, for her Imperial Lord

Ts’ai Chi’h

In a Station of the Metro

Alba

Heather

The Faun

Pervigilium

The Encounter

Tempora

Black Slippers: Bellotti

Society

Image from D’Orleans

Papyrus

Ione, Dead the Long Year

Shop Girl

To Formianus’ Young Lady Friend

Tame Cat

L’Art, 1910

Simulacra

Women before a Shop

Epilogue

The Social Order

The Tea Shop

Epitaphs

Our Contemporaries

Ancient Wisdom, Rather Cosmic

The Three Poets

The Gipsy

The Game of Chess

Provincia Deserta

LUSTRA OF EZRA POUND

TENZONE

Will people accept them?

(i.e. these songs).

As a timorous wench from a centaur

(or a centurion),

Already they flee, howling in terror.

Will they be touched with the verisimilitudes?

Their virgin stupidity is untemptable.

I beg you, my friendly critics,

Do not set about to procure me an audience.

I mate with my free kind upon the crags;

the hidden recesses

Have heard the echo of my heels,

in the cool light,

in the darkness.

THE CONDOLENCE

A mis soledades voy,

De mis soledades