• Pound Sign

    Author(s):
    Jeffrey Blevins (see profile)
    Date:
    2014
    Group(s):
    American Literature, Poetics and Poetry
    Subject(s):
    Poetry, Modernism (Literature), Philosophy, Economics, Political science, Poetics
    Item Type:
    Article
    Tag(s):
    economics, modernism, philosophy, poetry, Politics
    Permanent URL:
    https://doi.org/10.17613/e3hv-q381
    Abstract:
    What can one, seemingly insignificant figure--possibly punctuation mark, possibly ideogram, possibly something else entirely--demonstrate about Ezra Pound’s figurative practice? #, which draws power from associations with Mencius’s well-field system and the Chinese character ching, becomes an emblem for a recurring quodlibet in The Cantos: how forces, and the structures allowing for these forces’ expression, coordinate into modes of holistic figuration. Critical work on The Cantos has entirely passed over #’s potential role in negotiating these two aspects (structure and force). Recuperating # as a figurative model allows for new ways of cognizing the expressive possibilities, and limitations, bound up in Pound’s figurative practices, as well as his poetics more generally.
    Metadata:
    xml
    Published as:
    Journal article     Show details
    Pub. DOI:
    10.1353/elh.2014.0045
    Publisher:
    Project Muse
    Pub. Date:
    2014-12-14
    Journal:
    ELH
    Volume:
    81
    Issue:
    4
    Page Range:
    1327 - 1361
    ISSN:
    1080-6547
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    7 months ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved
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