The Early Poetry of Ezra Pound

In this study of the thematic and technical characteristics of Ezra Pound’s early poetry, Thomas H. Jackson shows how the concerns that marked Pound’s first books remain important even in his most recent efforts. By showing what Pound made of the influence of Yeats, Rosetti, and other poets of the 1890s, Jackson brings out the intense subjectivity of Pound’s aesthetics. In other chapters, he discusses the influence of the Provençal and Tuscan poets on Pound, using Pound’s theories about that poetry to illustrate the nature of Pound’s own work. He also deals with Pound’s alleged debt to Browning and to T. E. Hulme and Henri Bergson, showing that it is not as large as has generally been assumed.