Part One: Places
1. How to Read The Cantos, or Rapallo Revisited
2. City vs. Country: Venice, Fortuna, and John Law
3. Rome: Greeting the Returning Gods and Sponsa Christi
4. The Mediterranean: Pound, Yeats, Stevens and the “Godly Sea”
Part Two: Meetings
5. “And Some Climbing” -- Dante
6. Poetry, History and Myth: Montale
7 “My Best Translator”: Carlo Izzo
8. James Laughlin and “‘Ma’ Riess of Rapallo”
Part Three: Readings
9. The Law and How To Break It: Canto 22
10. China in Different Voices
11. Repeating the Past: Canto 47
12. Poet as Anthropologist: “European Paideuma”
13. Moscardino and Enrico Pea (“pronounced peh-ah”)
14. The Italian Cantos 72 and 73
15. The Pisan Cantos in Progress
16. The Scandal of the Cantos
Part Four: Endings
17. America and Italy in the Posthumous Cantos
18. “I wish he would explain his explanation”: Pound and Stevens as self-explicators
19. E.P., H.D., and the Making of End to Torment
20. Sant’Ambrogio in the Half-Light
Afterword
Chronology
Works Cited
Massimo Bacigalupo is emeritus professor of American literature at the University of Genoa, Italy, author of The Forméd Trace: The Later Poetry of Ezra Pound (Columbia University Press, 1980) and more recently the editor of Pound’s Posthumous Cantos (Carcanet, 2016). His articles and reviews have appeared in the Paris Review, Modern Language Review, Yale Review, Notes & Queries, The Wallace Stevens Journal, etc. He has edited and translated works by Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Dickinson, Melville, Eliot, Stevens, Faulkner, and Heaney. Bacigalupo grew up in Rapallo, in a family of doctors that knew Pound and his relatives as patients and friends. In 1985 he curated a centenary Pound exhibition in Rapallo. He has edited new editions and translations of the poetry, and is widely acknowledged as one of Pound’s foremost interpreters.
Reviews'This book is a marvel. It is, at last, an exciting account
of Ezra Pound awakening to the beauty of Italy. There he found
reason for his belief in a verse that is alive, and for his
insistence that "art is a joyous thing." In his seafront attic in
Rapallo, and in his walks through the Ligurian hills, he heard a
new rhythm and melody, and felt elated in the clarity of the
landscape. Massimo Bacigalupo guides us through The Cantos, helping
us see the poem's wonders through Italy -- and the opposite,
Italy's through the poetry. Here, too, are lively relationships
with other writers such as Yeats, Montale, Eliot, and H.D., all
influenced by the impudent yet munificent Italian-based American
poet. Best of all, Bacigalupo, as a family friend, gives us an
intimate account of the Pound ménage, filled with delicious
anecdotes and new facts for a portrait of the poet, his life, and
his loves.'
Grace Schulman, recipient of Frost Medal for Lifetime Achievement
in American Poetry
'Ezra Pound spent most of his adult life in Rapallo, and Italy
became the locale for his poetry and his aesthetics. Pound's
Italian context is here established by Professor Bacigalupo, a
major authority on Pound and his literary milieu, himself born in
Rapallo, and knowing Pound from his own childhood until the poet’s
last years. A much-needed frame is added to our understanding of
this great American rebel.'
Michael Alexander, author of The Poetry of Ezra Pound
'Fresh readings, sharp insights--a surprising new look at this
inexhaustibly enigmatic and challenging figure.'
Jonathan Galassi, President, Farrar Straus & Giroux
'Ezra Pound, Italy and the Cantos comes from the pen of one of the
foremost Pound critics... as a guide to the Cantos so rooted in
Italy and Italian history, and as an exploration of the people and
forces that shaped Pound and his poetry, it would be hard to better
this book. It should be of interest to both the general reader of
poetry and to the academic specialist.'
William Wall, Dublin Review of Books
'One couldn’t ask for a better tour guide of Pound’s Italy... it
not only clarifies hundreds of details in The Cantos, bringing us
that much closer to the ideal of a completely annotated text, but
is filled with fascinating anecdotes and revealing trivia... a
major contribution to Pound studies.'
Steven Moore, Literary Matters
'Bacigalupo offers many perspectives on Pound and his relation to
Italy and is especially helpful in prompting questions about the
relation of real to imagined places.'
Peter Nicholls, Studies in Travel Writing
'Ezra Pound, Italy, and The Cantos unveils an intimate portrait of
both poet and poem. Massimo Bacigalupo’s study is conversational in
tone, yet nevertheless scholarly and astute.'
Patrick James Dunagan, Rain Taxi
'With delicate sensitivity and absolute mastery of the subject,
Bacigalupo leads the reader into the labyrinth of the Cantos and
along the troubles of Pound's life, studded with encounters with
extraordinary men and wonderful women, shedding a little light to
help the reader see Beauty and to appreciate what is right.'
Luca Gallesi, Il Giornale & Letteratura Statunitense
'Massimo Bacigalupo comes from a family with a long history of
actual personal connection with the Pounds; as his new study both
implicitly suggests and explicitly demonstrates, such intimacies
are affective and meaningful... Bacigalupo's study is, overall, a
sensitive, erudite, and very approachable collection of essays that
assumes a fair degree of knowledge about Pound's life and work, but
does not require it.'
Michael Kindellan, Wallace Stevens Journal
'Bacigalupo's book is interwoven with detailed agnosticism and
analysis, especially in the third part, frontally dedicated to a
series of Readings, hand to hand with the harsh difficulty of
Pound's text. But perhaps its most seductive aspect is precisely
the possibility, for the reader, of using it as a critical
Baedecker, a safe compass for wandering around Pound's continent,
relying on the author's geographies. [...] The reader can continue
- even happily - to get lost. But it can do so, now, with the
support of a study that knows how to come to terms with even the
most aberrant side of Pound, without pretending it does not exist.
And knows, above all, how to capture every glimmer of his elusive,
ambiguous, "luminous details".'Massimo Natale, il Manifesto
Translated from Italian:
'Il volume di Bacigalupo è intessuto di agnizioni e analisi
dettagliate, soprattutto nella terza parte, frontalmente dedicata a
una serie di Readings, di corpo a corpo con l’aspra difficoltà del
testo poundiano. Ma forse il suo aspetto più seduttivo è proprio la
possibilità, per il lettore, di usarlo come un Baedecker critico,
una bussola sicura per aggirarsi nel continente-Pound, affidandosi
alle geografie autoriali. [...] Il lettore può continuare – anche
felicemente – a perdersi. Ma può farlo, ora, con la scorta di uno
studio che sa fare i conti anche con il lato più aberrante di
Pound, senza fingere che questo non esista. E sa, soprattutto,
cogliere ogni chiarore dei suoi sfuggenti, ambigui, «luminous
details».'Massimo Natale, il Manifesto
'Bacigalupo is, first and foremost, a brilliant interpreter of
Pound’s work; this personal experience of Pound’s Italian world,
however, gives him an edge over most other Poundians, particularly
with regard to the theme of this book. [...] Here as elsewhere in
the book, Bacigalupo is authoritative and carefully attentive to
all the nuances of Pound’s translation in comparison with the
Italian original, giving the benefit of the doubt where beauty
outweighs a more literal accuracy. [...] Bacigalupo’s book is
always original and stimulating in its insights. Put simply, it is
a tour de force, a must-read for any Poundian worth their
sale.'
Andrew Houwen, Make It New - Ezra Pound Society
'[Ezra Pound, Italy and The Cantos] is the most intimate and
comprehensive look at Pound's creative process and the degree to
which it is linked to his favoured places, art and history in
Italy.'
Gary Geddes, Pacific Rim Review of Books
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