CURRENT LITERATURE
THE POETRY OF EZRA POUND By Alice Steiner Amdur
This is a somewhat prejudiced but discriminating study (Oxford University Press, 5s. 6d.). Miss Amdur dearly does not like Mr. Pound, but has to admit that he has written some fine poetry. His earlier poetry appeals most to her ; Mauberley she finds disap- pointing, compared both with Mr. Eliot's Waste Land and his Sweeney poems ; the Cantos she considers a failure. The reason for this she finds in Mr. Pound's lack of structural power and of a scale of values. The first of these objections may be justified, but surely not the second. Mr. Pound has a very definite scale of values, formed by his experience as a poet ; it can be felt in all his judgements, making him at his best a brilliant critic ; but it is personal and idiosyncratic : it is not everybody's scale of values. On his lack of dramatic power Miss Amdur is much better : " Pound is a master at catching vocal inflections, but each monologue consists of one voice telling one story, and the emphasis is on the actor and his speech, not on the conflict of emotions the actor describes." On the other hand she is unjust to Pound as a reformer. It is absurd to say that " He resents the war, not as the tragedy of our civilisation, but as an unpardon- ably stupid intrusion of the world on the artist." A famous passage in Mauberley is enough to refute that. She pays full homage, on the other hand, to Pound's extraordinary musical and verbal sense, which is unrivalled ' in our age. She is attracted and repelled by him, attracted in spite of her repulsion. This makes her book lively and penetrating, but unsatisfactory. It is, nevertheless, within these limits, an excellent piece of work and will repay study.
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