Whitman in Pound's Mirror

Abstract

0VER ten years ago, the publication of Ezra Pound's Collected %-I Early Poems1 made available much of his significant early work that had long been out of print. Three major books2 and numerous articles have undertaken the explication of this material, yet a good deal remains to be done; certainly these poems have received nothing like the detailed commentary that has enriched our understanding and appreciation of Pound's magnum opus, The Cantos. But the early poems are nearly as allusive as The Cantos, and even the least successful of them can sometimes provide a key to the elucidation of the sources, the thought, and the technique of the later poems and contribute to our apprehension of Pound's work as a whole. Pound's relation to Whitman is one area need of further examination. While British reviewers of Pound's first books were quick to note that he has fallen . . . under the dangerous influence of Whitman,3 none of them went so far as to pinpoint Whitman's presence there, and more recent commentaries have followed Willard's conclusion that in the published poems