1. Mr. Pound is an experimenter in verse, who has come under many
influences and belonged to many schools. His work should be studied
chronologically to discover these changes in interest and relationship.
To be noted among the influences are: (1) the mediæval poetry of
Provence; (2) the Greek poets; (3) the Latin poets of the Empire; (4)
among modern French poets, Laurent Tailhade; (5) the poets of China and
Japan, whom he learned to know through the manuscript notes of Ernest
Fenollosa; (6) the work of the English Imagists (cf. especially the poems
of T.E. Hulme, published in Mr. Pound's volume called _Ripostes_); (7)
the work of the Vorticist school of poets and artists (cf. _Blast_,
edited by Wyndham Lewis), and the more accessible periodical, _The
Egoist_, of which Richard Aldington (cf. Manly and Rickert, _Contemporary
British Literature_) is assistant editor.
2. Consider also this from his own theory of poetry: "Poetry is a sort of
inspired mathematics, which gives us equations, not for abstract figures,
triangles, spheres and the like, but equations for the human emotions. If
one have a mind which inclines to magic rather than science, one will
prefer to speak of these equations as spells or incantations; it sounds
more arcane, mysterious, recondite."
Can this be related to the qualities of Mr. Pound's poetry?
3. After reading Mr. Pound's output, discuss the adequacy of the
following: "When content has become for an artist merely something to
inflate and display form with, then the petty serves as well as the
great, the ignoble equally with the lofty, the unlovely like the
beautiful, the sordid as the clean.... Real feeling consequently becomes
rarer, and the artist descends to trivialities of observation, vagaries
of assertion, or mere _bravado_ of standards and expression--pure tilting
at convention."