BK. Ezra Pound

35. A Draft of XVI Cantos of Ezra Pound for the Beginning of a Poem of Some Length. Paris: Three Mountains, 1925.

		The publication that with minor exceptions establishes the versions of the early Cantos in the form in which they are now known is reprinted with slight emendation in all subsequent collected editions.

The publication that with minor exceptions establishes the versions of the early Cantos in the form in which they are now known. Cantos I-III are almost wholly rewritten. Longenbach (183) suggests that the major difference between the ‘Three Cantos’ (27) and I-III here is that the ‘visionary’ Pound has been edited out, though canto I retains from ‘Three Cantos’ III Odysseus’s journey to the ghost of Tiresius to learn the secrets of the past and the future. Reprints, with slight emendation, cantos IV (31) and VII (34). Reprinted, with slight emendation, in 41 and 57.

a. II. Lines about ‘So-shu’ following the brief invocation to Browning have stirred a considerable controversy among Pound scholars, and may or may not be derived from Japanese sources. See 102, 150, 151, 159, and 173. Much of the canto as it appears here and in the standard text (57) appeared first as canto VIII in Dial 72 (1922): 505-09.

b. III and XI. See 36. Canto XI first appeared in slightly different form as canto XII in Criterion 1 (1923).