Description
The centennial edition of Ezra Pound's early poetic masterpiece—in a handsome facsimile edition.
First published in 1915, Cathay, Ezra Pound’s early monumental work, originally contained fourteen translations from the Chinese and a translation of the Anglo-Saxon poem “The Seafarer.” Over time, these poems have been widely read and loved as both translations and original poetry. In 1916, Cathay was reprinted in the book Lustra without “The Seafarer” and with four more Chinese poems. Cathay is greatly indebted to the notes of a Harvard-trained scholar Ernest Fenollosa. “In Fenollosa’s Chinese poetry materials,” Pound scholar Zhaoming Qian writes, “Pound discovered a new model that at once mirrored and challenged his developing poetics.” Edited by Qian, this centennial edition reproduces for the first time the text of the original publication plus the poems from Lustra and transcripts of all the relevant Fenollosa notes and Chinese texts. Also included is a new foreword by Ezra Pound’s daughter Mary de Rachewiltz, providing an appreciation and fascinating background material on this pivotal work of Pound’s oeuvre.
Reviews
""Pound, transcreating Chinese poetry in English, seems to have anticipated that making it new in our endless, inescapable present would increasingly mean returning to the old."" — Pankaj Mishra, The New York Times Book Review
""With the vers libre of Cathay, T. S. Eliot famously observed, Pound had become "the inventor of Chinese poetry for our time." " — Richard Sieburth
Also By: Ezra Pound 
ABC of Reading
E Book, 2013
Ezra Pound’s classic book about the meaning of literature, with a new introduction by Michael Dirda.
New Selected Poems and Translations
Second Edition, Paperback, 2011
The essential collection of Ezra Pound’s poetry—newly expanded and annotated with essays by Richard Sieburth, T. S. Eliot, and John Berryman.
ABC of Reading
Paperback, 2011
Ezra Pound’s classic book about the meaning of literature, with a new introduction by Michael Dirda.
The Pisan Cantos
New Edition, Paperback, 2003
At last, a definitive, paperback edition of Ezra Pound's finest work.
Ezra Pound and James Laughlin: Selected Letters
Hardback, 1994
Ezra Pound and James Laughlin: Selected Letters is a modernist source book - essential reading for anyone interested in tracing the real development of twentieth-century literature.