Ezra Pound, Italy, and The Cantos

Ezra Pound’s residence in Italy spanned six decades (1920s to 1970s), during which he composed most of his ambitious epic, The Cantos. He largely employed Italian materials: landscapes, artworks, politics, history, people. Bacigalupo approaches Pound’s poetry through its principal physical and cultural background, proposing a new and rewarding reading of The Cantos as an account of things seen and noted with a poet’s eye for the striking detail and telling phrase. We visit alongside Pound his favorite cities and landscapes (Rome, Venice, Rapallo) and encounter some of his foremost Italian peers, associates, and translators. Bacigalupo offers readings of important and neglected writings by Pound and shows how he created an autobiographical myth out of his multifarious experience. We get to see the poet at work and are provided with new essential keys to a nuanced understanding of Pound’s lively, tantalizing, and contradictory poetic world. This is the first time that so much material concerning a central aspect of Pound’s life and writing has been gathered in one volume.