I agree on everything you say on the Library of America. I have Pound's
book. If you are interested in Italian literature, something similar (I do
not think they are a non profit organization) is I Meridiani, same enormous
number of pages, all work included, beautiful thin paper.
On 10/31/07, Jon Corelis <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> This may be old news, but I've recently come across Pound: Poems &
> Translations (2003) in the Library of America series. For those who
> don't know about them, the Library of America (a publisher with whom I
> have no personal blah blah blah) is a nonprofit (NEH, Ford money)
> organization putting out classic American literature in standardized
> editions. The volumes are very well produced, handsome hardbacks,
> usually with a huge number pages, printed on high-quality thin paper
> so they all fit. Not cheap, but amazon.com (a vendor in which I have
> no financial yada yada yada) seems to have them all discounted.
>
> Anyway, the Ezra Pound volume might be something that those interested
> in Pound will want to have, even if they already have most of his
> books. At nearly 1400 pages, it claims to contain all of Pound's
> verse outside the Cantos, including the plays, the translations, the
> poems and translations by Pound included in his literary criticism,
> and items previously unpublished or published in sources no longer
> generally available. Particularly interesting is the year-by-year
> chronology at the end of the book, which is so detailed that it
> amounts to a capsule biography. Also included are terse but
> informative notes, which often provide some surprising literary
> miscellanea: for instance, in 1954 there was a dramatic reading at
> New School for Social Research in New York of Women of Trachis, with
> the role of Hyllus read by -- James Dean! And in 1960 there was a
> production of the same play by The Living Theatre (what ever happened
> to those guys?) with the Hyllus role played by -- Martin Sheen!
>
> There's also a lot of prose included: Pound's translation of
> Fenollosa on the Noh, and the Analects, though maybe they consider
> the latter a prose poem -- was the original in verse?
>
> All in all, a very handy collection.
>
> --
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>
> Jon Corelis www.geocities.com/joncpoetics/
>
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>
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