Approaches to Teaching Pound’s Poetry and Prose
- Editors: Demetres P. Tryphonopoulos, Ira B. Nadel
- Pages: 254
- Published: 2021
- ISBN: 9781603294492 (Paperback)
- ISBN: 9781603294706 (Hardcover)
“In this book the challenges of teaching Pound are brilliantly reframed as pedagogical opportunities.”
—Michael Kindellan, University of Sheffield
Known for his maxim “Make it new,” Ezra Pound played a principal role in shaping the modernist movement as a poet, translator, and literary critic. His works, with their complex structures and layered allusions, remain widely taught. Yet his known fascism, anti-Semitism, and misogyny raise issues about dangerous ideologies that influenced his work and that must be addressed in the classroom.
The first section, “Materials,” catalogs the print and digital editions of Pound’s works, evaluates numerous secondary sources, and provides a history of Pound’s critical contexts. The essays in the second section, “Approaches,” offer strategies for guiding students toward a clearer understanding of Pound’s difficult works and the context in which they were written.
Acknowledgments (ix)
Preface (xi)
PART ONE: MATERIALS
Editions (3)
Other Primary Sources (6)
Modern Critical Reception (8)
Biographical Backgrounds (14)
Reference Materials (16)
Multimedia Resources (17)
Pound and Pedagogy (18)
PART TWO: APPROACHES
Introduction (23)
Teaching the Poetry and the Controversial Poet
Teaching Celebrity Pound (30)
“Free from Emotional Slither”: Gender, Sexuality, and Pound’s Ejaculations (38)
Pound among the Women (49)
Anti-Semitism, Racism, and Conspiracy Theories in Pound’s Rome Radio Speeches (59)
“Out of Key with His Time”: Pound as Poet in Exile (69)
Pound and Difficulty (79)
Pound’s Aesthetics
Pound’s Prosody for the Classroom (88)
Patience for the “Ancients”: Studying Classical Allusions in Pound’s Prosodic Practice (100)
Pound and the Early-Twentieth-Century Visual Revolution (112)
Vorticism, the Palimpsest, the Ideogram, and Pound’s Understanding of Chinese Historiography in The Cantos (123)
Pound’s China: Teaching “The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter” and Canto 49 (133)
Pound’s Economics and Politics (145)
Classroom Contexts
The Cantos in a Quarter (155)
Using Electronic Resources and Information Technologies to Teach Pound’s Guide to Kulchur and Canto 45 (165)
Usury, Poetry, and Art: Canto 45 (176)
Pound as Noh Student: The Lessons of Hagoromo (184)
Pound and Periodicals: Editing Modernism (193)
“Poundian Ambition on the Semester System”: Pound, the Avant-Garde, and the Academy (202)
Notes on Contributors (213)
Survey Respondents (217)
Works Cited (219)
