Editing Ezra Pound (section)

==="Three Cantos", resignation from ''Poetry''===
After the publication of ''Cathay'', Pound mentioned that he was working on a long poem. He described it in September 1915 as a "cryselephantine poem of immeasurable length which will occupy me for the next four decades unless it becomes a bore".<ref>Pound to Milton Bronner, an American reporter, cited in Moody (2007), 306.</ref> In February 1916, when Pound was 30, the poet [[Carl Sandburg]] paid tribute to him in ''Poetry'' magazine. Pound "stains darkly and touches softly", he wrote:

[[File:EzraPound Pavannes.JPG|thumb|upright=1.1|alt=photograph|Pound by [[E. O. Hoppé]] on the cover of ''Pavannes and Divisions'' (1918)]]
<blockquote style="border-left: 3px solid #ccc;">
All talk on modern poetry, by people who know, ends with dragging in Ezra Pound somewhere. He may be named only to be cursed as wanton and mocker, poseur, trifler and vagrant. Or he may be classed as filling a niche today like that of Keats in a preceding epoch. The point is, he will be mentioned.&nbsp;...{{pb}}In the cool and purple meantime, Pound goes ahead producing new poems having the slogan, "Guts and Efficiency," emblazoned above his daily program of work. His genius runs to various schools and styles. He acquires traits and then throws them away. One characteristic is that he has no characteristics. He is a new roamer of the beautiful, a new fetcher of wild shapes, in each new handful of writings offered us.<ref>Sandburg (1916)</ref></blockquote>

In June, July and August 1917 Pound had the first three cantos published, as "Three Cantos", in ''Poetry''.<ref name=Threecantos/><ref name=Moody2007p306>Moody (2007), 306–307</ref> He was now a regular contributor to three literary magazines. From 1917 he wrote music reviews for the ''New Age'' as William Atheling and art reviews as B.&nbsp;H.&nbsp;Dias.<ref>Tytell (1987), 71; Carpenter (1988), 314–316</ref> In May 1917 [[Margaret C. Anderson|Margaret Anderson]] hired him as foreign editor of the ''Little Review''.<ref>Moody (2007), 325</ref> He also wrote weekly pieces for ''The Egoist'' and the ''Little Review''; many of the latter complained about provincialism, which included the ringing of church bells.<ref>Moody (2007), 332–333</ref> (When Pound lived near St Mary Abbots he had "engaged in a fierce, guerrilla warfare of letters" about the bells with the vicar, Reverend R. E. Pennefather, according to Richard Aldington.)<ref>Aldington (1941), 103; for the vicar's name, Hutchins (1965), 82–83</ref> The volume of writing exhausted him.<ref>Moody (2007), 330–331, 342</ref> In 1918, after a bout of illness which was presumably the [[Spanish flu]],<ref>Moody (2007), 341</ref> he decided to stop writing for the ''Little Review''. He had asked the publisher for a raise to hire a typist, the 23-year-old [[Iseult Gonne]], causing rumors that they were having an affair, but he was turned down.<ref>Moody (2007), 339</ref>

{{Quote box
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 | title=And the days are not full enough
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<poem>And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
                Not shaking the grass.
</poem>
 |source= — ''Personae'' (1926)<ref>Pound (1990), [https://books.google.com/books?id=IQvp1pKN2k0C&pg=PA82 82]; Pound (2003a), 1277</ref>
}}

A suspicion arose in June 1918 that Pound himself had written an article in ''The Egoist'' praising his own work, and it was clear from the response that he had acquired enemies. The poet [[F. S. Flint]] told ''The Egoist''{{'s}} editor that "we are all tired of Mr. Pound". British literary circles were "tired of his antics" and of him "puffing and swelling himself and his friends", Flint wrote. "His work has deteriorated from book to book; his manners have become more and more offensive; and we wish he would go back to America."<ref>Crunden (1993), 271</ref>

The March 1919 issue of ''Poetry'' published Pound's ''Poems from the Propertius Series'',<ref>Pound (1919)</ref> which appeared to be a translation of the Latin poet [[Sextus Propertius]].{{efn|In his next poetry collection in 1921, Pound renamed it ''Homage to Sextus Propertius'' in response to the criticism.}} Harriet Monroe, editor of ''Poetry'', published a letter in April 1919 from a professor of Latin, [[William Gardner Hale|W. G. Hale]], who found "about three-score errors" in the text; he said Pound was "incredibly ignorant of Latin", that "much of what he makes his author say is unintelligible", and that "If Mr. Pound were a professor of Latin, there would be nothing left for him but suicide" (adding "I do not counsel this").<ref>[https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=59167 Hale (1919)], 52, 55; Kenner (1973), 286; Moody (2007), 353</ref> Pound replied to Monroe: "Cat-piss and porcupines!! The thing is no more a translation than my 'Altaforte' is a translation, or than [[Edward FitzGerald (poet)|Fitzgerald]]'s [[Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam|Omar]] is a translation." His letter ended "In final commiseration". Monroe interpreted his silence after that as his resignation from ''Poetry'' magazine.<ref>Kenner (1973), 286; Moody (2007), 354</ref>