BK. Ezra Pound

165. Tsunoda, Shirô. Ezra Pound to tôyô no bunka (Pound and Eastern culture). Tokyo:  Seijisha, 1982.

Tsunoda’s overview of Pound’s East Asian interests remains among the most complete available. The work emphasises Pound’s interest in Chinese rather than Japanese materials, but two chapters concerned with the latter provide a useful summary of their importance in the development of Pound’s work. ‘Haiku kara eta shuhô’ (Technique acquired through haiku) traces the relation between haiku and the development of Imagist poetics, and finds manifestations of the hokku-derived form of super-position (see 12) not only in the early poems but also in The Cantos; and ‘Nô—yôkyoku kara dônyûsareta shihô’ (Principles of poetry derived from the nô) traces Pound’s work with Fenollosa’s nô manuscripts, suggests that the ‘unity of image’ Pound discovered in the nô (see 12, 17f, and 87) informs the structure of The Cantos, and calls attention to particular manifestations of images from the nô in that work. See also 112 and 161.