Kat with a K

Review: Selected Cantos of Ezra Pound

Selected Cantos of Ezra Pound
Genre: Poetry
Pages: 119
Rating: 3.5

I'm not very good at reading contemporary poetry. Give me Catullus or Donne or Tennyson and I'm fine. I'm iffy on most of the new stuff, though. (There are exceptions. Neruda. Li-Young Lee. Elizabeth Bishop.) But I want to be better at it, to like it more. So I'm trying. A good friend regularly raves about Pound, so it seemed as good a place to start as any. And... I don't know. There were some parts I genuinely liked, and some parts I found interesting, and some parts in which the language took my breath away. But there were also many parts that made me say "Huh?" And some that made me say "Yeah, so?" I'm glad I read it, and I will keep trying contemporary poets, both because I think it's good for me and because I'm sure I will surprise myself by liking some that I wouldn't expect. But I don't think I'll be listing Pound among my favorites.