Books, Arts & Manners: Ezroar and Wyndham

Pound/Lewis: The Letters of Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis, edited by Timothy Materer (New Directions, 384 pp., $35)

In his 1951 review of Ezra Pound’s Letters, Wyndham Lewis described the tone as “authoritative, not to say pontificatory,” but said that “his rockdrill action is impressive: he blasts away tirelessly, prodding and coaxing.” So the correspondence of two of the most lively, energetic, and original minds of the twentieth century was bound to be interesting. Pound and Lewis had collaborated on BLAST (“the great MAGENTA cover’d opusculus”), criticized each other’s work, portrayed and parodied each other; and Lewis had done a number of brilliant portraits of Pound. Since both men had notoriously rebarbative personalities, only profound mutual respect could have enabled their friendship to survive the vicissitudes of poverty and prison, blindness and madness.

About the Author

Jeffrey Meyers

Mr. Meyers is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the author of John Huston: Courage and Art.

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Pound/Lewis: The Letters of Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis, edited by Timothy Materer (New Directions, 384 pp., $35)

In his 1951 review of Ezra Pound’s Letters, Wyndham Lewis described the tone as “authoritative, not to say pontificatory,” but said that “his rockdrill action is impressive: he blasts away tirelessly, prodding and coaxing.” So the correspondence of two of the most lively, energetic, and original minds of the twentieth century was bound to be interesting. Pound and Lewis had collaborated on BLAST (“the great MAGENTA cover’d opusculus”), criticized each other’s work, portrayed and parodied each other; and Lewis had done a number of brilliant portraits of Pound. Since both men had notoriously rebarbative personalities, only profound mutual respect could have enabled their friendship to survive the vicissitudes of poverty and prison, blindness and madness.