Ezra Pound and the Legacy of The Cantos

 

CONFERENCE PROGRAM

 

EPIC-30 Co-Conveners

Roxana Preda, University of Edinburgh

Andrew Taylor, University of Edinburgh

Walter Baumann, University of Ulster

John Gery, University of New Orleans

 

EPIC Organizing Committee

University of Edinburgh:

Alex Thomson

Sam Brudell

Sian Cusack

 

EPIC Advisory Committee

Massimo Bacigalupo, University of Genoa

Walter Baumann, University of Ulster

Diana Collecott. University of Durham

John Gery, University of New Orleans (Secretary)

Alan Golding, University of Louisville

David Moody, University of York

Akitoshi Nagahata, Nagoya University

Viorica Patea, University of Salamanca

 

MONDAY, 26 JUNE 2023

11:00–12:00

Walking Tour, The Royal Mile, Edinburgh

Meeting Place:

Castle esplanade

EH1 2NG

 

14:00–16:00

Visit to National Library of Scotland

Meeting Place:

Library entrance on George IV Bridge

EH1 1EW

 

19:30–22:00

Informal Gathering

Meeting Place:

Teviot Place summer garden

EH8 9AG

  

TUESDAY, 27 JUNE 2023

University of Edinburgh

50 George Square

 

8:00-9:30: REGISTRATION, 50 George Square

Ground Floor Corridor, Screening Room

  

9:30-10.45

Session 1: Plenary

The Legacy of Ezra Pound

Screening Room, Ground Floor

 

Chair: Roxana Preda, University of Edinburgh

Walter Baumann, University of Ulster

How I Became a Poundian

Austin Briggs, Hamilton College

My Day with E.P.: 8 June 1969, Hamilton College

Alex Thomson, Head of School of Literatures Languages and Cultures

Welcome Address

 

10:45-11:15: TEA/COFFEE BREAK

 

11:15-12:30

Session 2A:  The Legacy of Pound in London: Imagism, Joyce and Vorticism

Project Room

Chair: Jo Brantley Berryman, California Institute of the Arts

Whit Frazier Peterson, University of Stuttgart

The Image Remains: Ezra Pound’s Des Imagistes One Hundred Years Later

Krista Rascoe, Tarrant Count College, Texas

Pound and Joyce: Constructing Images and Friendship

Hidetoshi Tomiyama, Meiji Gakuin University (Tokyo)

Images and Metaphors in the “Vorticism” Essay

 

Session 2B: Canonical Methods and Motives in The Cantos

Room G01

Chair: Giuliana Ferreccio, Università di Torino

Rosina Martucci, Università degli Studi di Salerno

The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri and The Cantos by Ezra Pound: Textual, Linguistic and Cultural Interferences

Rhett Forman, Tarleton State University (Texas)

Ezra Pound’s Aristotle and the Scientific Poet

Karina Ibragimova,  Lomonosov Moscow State University

“Go, my song” and “Pull down thy vanity”: Canto 36 and Canto 81

 

 

12:30-14:00: LUNCH                 Registration Area, Ground Floor

 

14:00-15:15

Session 3A: In the Company of the Elder Ezra

Project Room

Chair: Diana Collecott, University of Durham

Stefano Maria Casella, Università IULM, Milan

Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot: Juvenile Visions, Old Age Revelations

Mary Maxwell, Poet and Independent Scholar, Truro, Massachusetts

Ezra Pound and The Washington Spectator

Helen Carr, Goldsmiths, University of London

End to Torment and Winter Love

 

Session 3B: The Chinese Philosophers and The Cantos

Room G01

Chair: Kent Su, Shanghai International Studies University

Xiaocui Tan, Qilu University of Technology

Confucian Ethics in Ezra Pound’s Canto 13 

Wenting Li, Sichuan International Studies University

The Integration of Translation and Creative Writing in Ezra Pound's Canto 13

Kenneth Haynes, Brown University

Ezra Pound’s Mencius

 

15:15-15:45: TEA/COFFEE BREAK

 

15:45-17:00

Session 4: Plenary

Pound in Print, Pound in the Canon

Project Room

Chair: Roxana Preda, University of Edinburgh

Rebecca Beasley, University of Oxford

A Draft of XXX Cantos: Pound, Cunard, and The Hours Press

Michael Coyle, Colgate University

Compleynt of Artemis: Dorothy Shakespear and the Purifications of the Third Folio

Anderson Araujo, University of British Columbia, Kelowna

“Toward a bridge over worlds”: Ezra Pound’s Poetry as World Literature

 

17:00-17:30: PAUSE

 

17.30-18:30 Special Event

Reid Hall

Session 5: Nine Troubadour Songs (Haesternae Rosae), translated by Ezra Pound, set to music by Walter Morse Rummel

Introduction: Roxana Preda, University of Edinburgh

Vocals: John Sweeney, baritone.

Piano: Philip Mayers

 

DINNER ON YOUR OWN

 

RECITAL PROGRAM

 

CHANSSON DOIL MOT.

Arnaut Daniel.

[fin du XIIième siècle]

 

With words both clear and exquisite

I'll sing, for buds are blowing sweet

Where frail sprays meet

And flowers don

Their bold blazon

Where leafage springeth greenly

O'er shadowing the birds that sing

And cry through coppice seemly

 

Among the boughs their song is fleet

In shame's avoid my staves compete

Fine-filed and neat

with love's glaives on,

His way they run,

From him I may not turn me

Although he bring

great sorrowing

And though he proudly spurn me.

 

 LO FERM VOLER

Arnaut Daniel.

[fin du XIIième siècle]

 

Firm desire that doth enter

My heart will not be hid by bolts nor nailing

Nor slanderers who loose their arms by lying

And dare not fight with even twigs and switches

Yea, by some jest, there where no uncle enters

I'll have my joy in garden or in chamber

I remember oft that chamber

Where, to my loss, I know that no man enters

But leaves me free as would a brother or uncle.

I shake in ev'ry part except my nails

As doth a child, for fear, before the switch

For fear I shall not come unto her arms.

 

 QUANT L’HERBA FRESQ EL FUELL APAR

Bernart de Ventadour.

[milieu du XIIième siècle]

 

When grass starts green and flowers rise

A-leaf in garden and in close

And philomel in dulcet cries

And lifted notes his heart bestows.

 

Joy I've in him and in the flowers joy

E’en joy in me have I yet more employ

Hath joy in her in whom my joy is cast

She is such joy as hath all joys o’er past.

 

I love her so and so her prize,

I fear her and such thoughts oppose

That my poor words dare not arise,

Nor speech nor deeds my heart disclose.

 

And yet she knows the depth of my annoy

And, when she will, she will her grace employ

For God's love, Love, put now our love to test

For time goes by and we here waste his best.

 

 LAS GRANS BEAUTATZ

Folquet de Romans (Rotmans)

[commencement du XIIIième siécle]

 

Her beauty and the fineness of her thought

And her true heart and all the food of praise.

And her high speech and the new-fangled ways

That colour hath when to her cheek 'tis brought

Give me the will for song and knowledge of it

Such were my song but such fears crowd above it

I dare not say 'tis you of whom I'm fain

And know not what shall count me loss or gain.

 

My love of her so secretly is wrought

That none save I and Love know love’s assay

And on my heart the flame in secrets preys,

Yet knowing this, you are not much distraught.

And yet I have such fear lest you reprove it,

That my heart scarce dares show you that you move it.

Yet if, when we're alone I daren't speak out

At least my songs shall say what I'm about.

 

 TANT M’ABELIS

de Palazol.

[milieu du XIIième siècle.]

 

So pleaseth me joy and good love and song

And merriment, fine ways and gentle breeding.

Nor silver nor rich rent has earth for heeding

That I would prize above such gifts for long

These are the things where on my hope is cast

But she hath them so in her beck and call

That without her I can get none at all.

So have I wished her good and her advance

And so loved her and so wished to be with her

That if she'd send me off, I know I'd neither

Have strength nor sense to go, by any chance.

If I speak her great praise and hold it fast

In what I've said, no man can prove me wrong

For by her fact, I can prove true my song.

 

 MERE AU SAUVEOUR

Williaume li Viniers.

[milieu du XIIIième siècle]

 

Maiden and Virgin loyal

In whom here Christ's God head.

As child glorious royal

Was conceived, born, nourished

Sweet maid be thy heart full fed

May his love and his grace allay

Thee this day,

when the Holy Ghost

By God's son honoured Thee most.

 

Lady imperious

O marvelous fleur-de-lys,

The holy fruit for us

Thou hast born specially

Ah, rose branch and sovran tree

Thou hast the flower, and fleet

Odour sweet

Whereby paradise

Shall be brought before our eyes.

 

 LI GRANZ DESIRS

Li Cuens d’Angou.

[milieu du XIIIième siècle]

 

The great desire sheds fragrance o'er my thinking.

My thought for you, Madame, who'rt worth so much

Hath in it pain 'gainst which there is no blinking,

You have me made and have long held me such

Still my tormented heart lies in your clutch

Which naught shall loose save Death come nigh to touch.

Except thy grace should prove my pain's unlinking.

 

The great desire and the keen pain behind it

Have wrought on the true heart such honest grief

That as thou gavest joy thou now dost blind it

Ah, thou wert made for pleasure past belief.

And if thou grant me never sweet relief

And if thou grant me never thy relief.

Then mercy's hid where I shall never find it.

 

 MAINTA IEN ME MAL RAZONA

[fin du XIIième siècle.]

 

Many people here miscall me.

That I sing so seldom now,

But that fair whose thoughts befall me

I know not how long, nor how,

Hath bound my thoughts so woefully

That the chains thereon appall me,

And I’ve lost all joy and glee

So doth ill fortune gall me.

 

She hath banished all my pleasure

And is honoured naught by this,

With some well turned lies and leisure

She might well have wrought my bliss,

Such long delay before the kiss

Overfloweth folly's measure

And for payment cries I wis,

Shame’s all I get to treasure.

 

 A L’ENTRADE

Chanson à danser

de la fin du XIIième siècle.

 

When cometh the clear time in, eya!

That our joys we may begin, eya!

To stir up the jealous men, eya!

Is our queen to show again

what gifts she has for play

 

Jealousy Ha-a-i-e be gone

Go we now, so we now a dancing our own way, our own way.

 

Ha! ha! here doth come the king! eya!

What a temper he doth bring! eya!

Bids us dancers break our ring! eya!

Lest his lady have her fling;

His April go a Maying.

 

Jealousy, Ha-a-i-e be gone

Go we now, go we now, a dancing our own way, our own way.

 

But our sweetest lady here, eya!

Hath of old men little care, eya!

And for light-foot bachelors, eya!

Keepeth she that heart of hers, Heig-ho!

what merry straying!

 

Jealousy Ha-a-i-e, be gone

Go we now, go we now, a dancing our own way, our own way.

  

WEDNESDAY, 28 JUNE 2023

 

9:00-17:00: REGISTRATION

Second Floor, Project Room

 

9:30-10.45

Session 6A: Pound's Legacy of Friends and Family

Project Room

 

Chair: Andy Trevathan, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge

Hannu Riikonen, University of Helsinki

Jim or Mr. Joyce? Names, Titles and Forms of Address in The Cantos

Stephen Wilson, Universidade de Coimbra

“…the fire bucket, 1806 Barre Mass’chusetts…” and what that entails: The Testamentary Poetics of Ezra Pound’s Cantos.

 

Session 6B: Modalities for reading The Cantos

Room G01

 

Chair: Courtney Ruffner Grieneisen, State College of Florida

Edward McLaren, University of Edinburgh

Pound’s Spinning Top

Youngmin Kim, Linnaeus University/Dongguk University/Hangzhou Normal University

Ezra Pound‘s The Cantos and World Literature Project: Distant Reading of Scale Up/Down from a Global Perspective”

Louis de Beaumont, Independent Scholar

POUNDIAN / A Digital Approach to The Cantos

 

10:45-11:15: TEA/COFFEE BREAK

 

11:15-12:30 

Session 7A: Paradigm Shifts and The Cantos: Mauberley and Noh

Project Room

 

Chair: Andrew Houwen, Tokyo Woman’s Christian University

Timothy J. Cook, University of Nebraska – Lincoln

Modernizing Western Epic: Yeats, Pound, and H. D.

Akiko Manabe, Shiga University

Blindness and Light in Pound’s paradiso terrestre: Another Study on Noh in The Cantos, especially Kagekiyo

Yoshiko Kita, Chuo University

The Cantos and Ezra Pound’s Translation of Noh

 

Session 7B:

Pound’s Legacy I: The European Heritage 

Room G01

 

Chair: Michael Coyle, Colgate University

Charlotte Estrade, Université Paris Nanterre

Pound’s Legacy in France: The Pivotal Role of the Cahiers de L’Herne (1966 – 1997)

Emanuele Zoppellari Perale, University of Turin

Poets in Paradise: Andrea Zanzotto’s Reading of Pound’s “Paradisiacal” Cantos

Viorica Patea, Universidad de Salamanca

Make It New and the Spanish Novísimos: Pound’s Legacy in Spain

 

12:30-14:00: LUNCH BREAK (on your own)

 

14:00-15:15

Session 8A: Eurasia and The Cantos

Project Room

 

Chair: Akitoshi Nagahata, Nagoya University

Ryan Johnson, University of Sydney

“And the russe”: Semi-Asiatic Russian in The Cantos

Yuxin Zhang, University of Sydney

“To the Odes to escape abstract yatter”: Shijing in The Cantos

Mark Byron, University of Sydney

“The Slide of Byzantium”: The Cantos’ Other Empire

 

Session 8B: Pound’s Legacy II: The Scots and the Canadians

Room G01

 

Chair: Rhett Forman, Tarleton State University (Texas)

Giacomo Bianchino, Graduate Center, City University of New York

The School of Ezra Pound and MacDiarmid’s Methods

John Gery, University of New Orleans

Scots Poundian: The Criticism and Poetry of G.S. Fraser   

Stewart Donavan, St. Thomas University, Fredericton, New Brunswick

Ezra Pound’s Legacy in the North Country

 

15:15-15:45: TEA/COFFEE BREAK

 

15:45-17:00

Session 9A: The Cantos and the Green World

Project Room

 

Chair: Stephen Romer, Brasenose College, University of Oxford

Jeff Grieneisen, State College of Florida

Finding Meaning in the Balance: Vorticism, Machine Age and the Ecocritical Breakthrough in The Cantos

Martina Kolb, Susquehanna University of Pennsylvania

Gathering from the Air a Live Tradition: Nietzsche, Pound and Kenneth White

Leonor María Martínez Serrano, Universidad de Córdoba

Being in Being: Ontological Attention in The Cantos of Ezra Pound

 

Session 9B: Pound’s Legacy III: The Asian Heritage

Room G01

 

Chair: Matz McLaughlin, Tokyo University of Science

 Duncan Poupard, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

The Decline of the “Ideogram” After The Cantos

Andrew Houwen, Tokyo Woman’s Christian University

“Your Sacred Words”: The Cantos in the Poetry of Takahashi Mutsuo

Kent Su, Shanghai International Studies University

Poundian Legacy in Contemporary Chinese Poetry: Yang Lian’s Concentric Circles

 

17:00-17:30: RECEPTION                                                       Project Room

 

17:30-19:00

Special Event EPIC Poetry Reading                

Project Room

Chair: Jeff Grieneisen, State College of Florida

 

Poets:

Silvia Falsaperla

Rhett Forman

John Gery

Jeff Grieneisen

Tony Lopez

Mary Maxwell

Matz McLaughlin

Biljana Obradovic

Stephen Romer

            and others

 

 

DINNER ON YOUR OWN

 

THURSDAY, 29 JUNE 2023

 

9:00-11:00: REGISTRATION                                         Project Room

 

9:30-10.45

Session 10A: Pound and the Far-Right                                          

Project Room

 

Chair: Anderson Araujo, University of British Columbia, Kelowna

Christian Goodwillie and Steve Yao, Hamilton College

New Evidence from the Archive: Ezra Pound, Ettore Rella, and Fascism

Andrea Rinaldi, University of Bergen

“From the wreckage of Europe”: The Legacy of The Cantos in Italian Post-War Far-Right

Julius Greve, University of Oldenburg

Broadcasting Reaction: Politics and Aesthetics in Ezra Pound and Kanye West

 

Session 10B: Pound’s Legacy in the Art of Translation

Room 2.39

 

Chair: Martina Kolb, Susquehanna University of Pennsylvania

Matz McLaughlin, Tokyo University of Science

Pound and Blackburn: Ezra Pound’s Legacy as Translator and Mentor

Joanna Trzeciak Huss, Kent State University

The Bridge to Pound: Eva Hesse, The Cantos, and Tadeusz Różewicz’s Pound Tetrology

Espen Grønlie, Oslo International School of Philosophy, Rome

Scandinavian Translations of The Cantos

 

10:45-11:15: TEA/COFFEE BREAK

 

11:15-12:30 

Session 11A: Metaphysical Pound and The Cantos

Project Room

 

Chair: Peter Liebregts, Leiden University

Robert von Hallberg, Claremont McKenna College

Ezra Pound, Explainer: Guide to Kulchur

James Dowthwaite, Friedrich Schiller University, Jena

“All done by conversation”: Vienna and the Salon Style of Cantos XXXV and XXXVIII

Giuliana Ferreccio, Università di Torino

Ezra Pound and Richard Saint Victor: The Eye and the Mind

 

Session 11B: Pound’s Legacy IV: The American Heritage            

Room 2.39

 

Chair: Viorica Patea, Universidad de Salamanca

Daniela Daniele, Università degli studi di Udine

Pound and Zukofsky; An Unprejudiced Transatlantic Dialogue

Michael Kindellan, University of Sheffield

The Cantos and the “New American Poetry”

Tetsuo Koga, Osaka Metropolitan University

Poetic Justice and its Consequences: The Case of Pound and Amiri Baraka

 

12:30-13:30: LUNCH ON YOUR OWN

 

13:30-17:30 Excursion to Abbotsford

The bus for Abbotsford departs from Potterrow, at Bristo Square, next to McEwan Hall. The bus will be waiting. Participants must be at the bus door by 13.20 to join the excursion.

 

Price per person: £32 (Advance reservation required)

 

FRIDAY, 30 JUNE 2023

9:00-9:30: REGISTRATION

 

9:30-10.45

Session 12A: Post-War Pound and the Avant-Garde                

Project Room

 

Chair: Robert von Hallberg, Claremont McKenna College

Felix Marzillier, Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Science and Humanities

The Poetics of Palimpsest: The German Avant-Garde Composer Bernd Alois Zimmermann and the Musical Legacy of The Cantos

Courtney Ruffner Grieneisen, State College of Florida

“Razzista, Fascista, Etccetera”: Pound’s Influence on Pasolini

Francesca Cadel, University of Calgary

Ezra Pound’s Presence in Pier Paolo Pasolini Posthumous Novel, Petrolio (1992).

 

Session 12B: Pound and Postmodern Pedagogy                              

Room 2.39

 

Chair: Mark Byron, University of Sydney

Jo Brantley Berryman, California Institute of the Arts

Understanding Pound: A Paradigm Shift – McLuhan, Eisenstein, Fenollosa, and La Pia

Andy Trevathan, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge

The Elephant in the Room: Teaching Pound’s Poetry

 

10:45-11:15: TEA/COFFEE BREAK

 

11:15-12:30 

Session 13: Plenary: The Classical Legacy in The Cantos        

Project Room

 

Chair: Massimo Bacigalupo, Università di Genova

Katerina (Kathryn) Stergiopoulou, Princeton University

Learning “a little greek” in the Late Cantos

Peter Liebregts, Leiden University

Pound, Horace and the Question of Legacy

 

12:30-14:00: LUNCH                                                        Ground Floor

 

14:00-15:15

Session 14: Plenary 3: Readings in The Cantos

Project Room

 

Chair: Ron Bush, Oxford University

Roxana Preda, University of Edinburgh

Canto 49 – A Look from the Other Side

Akitoshi Nagahata, Nagoya University

Composition with History as a Legacy: Reading the Historical Accounts of Hideyoshi in Canto 58

Massimo Bacigalupo, Università di Genova

Between Kung and Eleusis: Canto 106   

 

15:15-15:45: TEA/COFFEE BREAK

 

15:45-17:00

Session 15: Thy True Heritage: The Future of Pound Studies

      An Open Discussion                                                                         

Project Room

 

Chairs: Mark Byron, University of Sydney

John Gery, University of New Orleans

Akitoshi Nagahata, Nagoya University

Roxana Preda, University of Edinburgh

 

17:00-17:10: PAUSE

17:10-18:00

Session 16: Business Meeting                                                            

Project Room

Chairs: Walter Baumann, University of Ulster

John Gery, University of New Orleans

 

19:00-21:00

BANQUET                    South Hall in the Pollock Halls complex

This location is about a 20-minute walk from 50 George Square. It can also be reached by bus: A 3-minute walk from 50 George Square to St. Patrick’s Square bus stop. Take busses #2, 30, or 33 south to the Commonwealth Pool (3 stops). From that stop, it is a 3-minute walk.

Address: 18 Holyrood Park Rd, Edinburgh EH16 5AR

 See map here:

 

SATURDAY, 1 JULY 2023

POST-CONFERENCE EXCURSION

Glencoe – Ben Nevis – Loch Ness

 7:45 am:

Meeting point will be the same as for the Abbotsford trip. Bus stop on Potterow, at Bristo Square.

Price per person: £85 (Advance reservation required)

 

One-day excursion from Edinburgh to Loch Ness, along the Kelpies, Stirling, and the Wallace Monument, a brief stop at Kilmahog, a stop at historic Glencoe, and a drive by the Great Glen pass under the shadow of Ben Nevis to Fort Augustus on Loch Ness (lunch on your own). After a 50-minute boat trip on Loch Ness (included in price), the bus will return through Laggan, Blair, and Pitlochry to Edinburgh.

 

8:00 pm: Return to Edinburgh

 

 

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