Philip Furia

By using his Cantos for storing, "making new," and transmitting historical documents, Pound was returning the epic to its ancient function as a tribal archive for the "luminous details" of history that define a culture's past and shape its future. So argues this book, which does not overlook the poem's brilliant lyrical passages but for the first time focuses on those vast stretches of Pound's epic composed not of literary touchstones but of...