I Read Ezra Pound’s ‘Selected Poems of Ezra Pound’.

I used to somewhat consider myself a poet. Or rather, I considered myself capable of writing poetry. I believe, aside from historical or mathematical or educational text, it’s the worst of the writing forms. That’s not to say it’s incapable of encapsulating some of the rawest,

primal and evocative emotion into a tight, crushed, pressure cooked brevity. Each word really does feel hand selected, chosen from deep behind the eyelid. Coaxed from some dreamplace that would never describe the scenario, the sentiment, in conversation or in story. I just believe that poetry is the “easiest” of forms and that “Anyone Can Do It”, and thereby many people do indeed write poetry, and the vast majority of it is as impactful and important and frankly as good as the ease at which it presented itself, especially On the Internet.

There are some masters, some people who understood it beyond even their own language of speech, language of hands. They seemed to bleed it. To stoke a fire long dead that commanded the earliest beating of our hearts, that called out to some ethereal plane with their words. There are some young poets now who evoke reaction from the primordial soup of the heart and are able to frame so much with so little. Beyond, though, there are no in-betweens. For me (I am no one, no authority), either it reads like art or it reads like the notebook of a seventh grade student following an assignment that either in earnest or disinterest fulfills a goal and evokes nothing.

I believe in poetry. I think it’s the thing that can stir someone from a place of pulselessness. It can drag someone from the sea of banality, shake off the static of every day. So when I get the chance to dig into it, I often will.

This book was given to me by an artist, a friend of a friend, on a night when there had been drink and smoke and music, and he was trying to pass a torch of some sort to me, giving me yellowed and ancient tomes that he thought would move me. He said they were given to him, and he wanted to pass them on so that it would be able to continue the idea of art and its meaning of being shared and spread wide by those passionate enough to engage with them. Along with this book, he gave me A Coney Island of the Mind by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Nova Express by William S. Burroughs and Howl by Allen Ginsberg. I believe I read them all then, some 13 years ago, but didn’t really commit them to my mind, except for the Burroughs.

I remember now that this collection began a bit beyond me, with whips of olde english, poems written as if they were tales, and a series of entries that felt without emotion, detached from the writer. It felt almost as if he were telling stories in the poetic format, and I’ll be blunt: if you want to tell a story, dude, tell a story. I have no idea what you’re saying here. Pound was born in the 1880s, so I think there was a time where this was chic, this was the style at the time. I’m not only (clearly) not born of that time, but I’m also fairly laymen about MUCH of what I read, what I enjoy, and what I create. To think that Pound, though, were ever creating his works to be viewed by an audience who sat in front of portable boxes with moving pictures, also interacting with those pictures and what’s more, doing so with others on a global scale is obscene. I think, for this style, I’m just a bit scatterbrained for it.

I’m not completely outside of the audience, not completely inept at this style; I loved collections by Rimbaud. I think his writing was meant far more personally, far more engaged on a person to person basis.

Pound, instead, writes limericks and little sing-songs. He references cities and kings and rulers and likely is assailing via politics, something I am wildly uninterested in. I am well below (or beyond) someone taking up a pen and lashing out at their government or their king and having any feeling about it. There comes a time when there can be words about WE as people, WE as a populace. What the common people will do, or how we will act. But these types of poems feel like tiny bits of rock thrown at massive ramparts.

Could this have been better if I were a different person? Sure! Could this have been more intriguing if I read it in a class while learning about the author, his journey, his context? Maybe! But this writing felt like a chore to get through, and not only was it about things I didn’t care about… it was written in a way I couldn’t tolerate. Perfect combination.

I can’t say I recommend this book, especially as a casual read. An academic might say otherwise. A scholar might agree. But for me, big pass.