Hugh Selwyn Mauberley

Hugh Selwyn Mauberley

By

5
(1 Review)
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley by Ezra Pound

Published:

1920

Pages:

26

Downloads:

1,786

Share This

Hugh Selwyn Mauberley

By

5
(1 Review)

Book Excerpt

s.

IV.

SCATTERED Moluccas
Not knowing, day to day,
The first day's end, in the next noon;
The placid water
Unbroken by the Simoon;

Thick foliage
Placid beneath warm suns,
Tawn fore-shores
Washed in the cobalt of oblivions;

Or through dawn-mist
The grey and rose
Of the juridical
Flamingoes;

A consciousness disjunct,
Being but this overblotted
Series
Of intermittences;

Coracle of Pacific voyages,
The unforecasted beach:
Then on an oar
Read this:

"I was
And I no more exist;
Here drifted
An hedonist."

MEDALLION

LUINI in porcelain!
The grand piano
Utters a profane
Protest with her clear soprano.

The sleek head emerges
From the gold-yellow frock
As Anadyomene in the opening
Pages of Reinach.

Honey-red, closing the face-oval
A basket-work of braids which seem as if they were
Spun in King Minos' hall
From metal, or

Readers reviews

5
4
3
2
1
5.0
Average from 1 Review
5
Write Review
Ezra Pound was a modernist poet and critic who admired the sparseness and imagery of Japanese poetry. He befriended and aided numerous young writers including T.S. Eliot and Hemingway, admired Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini and was a self declared fascist. He engaged in fascist propaganda in world war two for the axis powers and against his native land, hated F.D. Roosevelt and despised the Jews who he blamed for much that was wrong in the world.
After the war he was arrested by American armed forces and imprisoned in a looney bin for 12 years.

All of this does not add up to Mr. Pound being much of a human being and yet his poetry is stunning. He is praised by critics for his economy of language but more accurately he is the master of making less into more. Pound could write the Odyssey in 200 words and make it better and more memorable.

His greatest accomplishment is the Cantos (not all written at one time) however this poem is a superb example of his early poetry. I can not like him but must admire his work.