Description
Book SynopsisIn October 1967, Pier Paolo Pasolini travelled to Venice to interview Ezra Pound for broadcast on national television. One a lifelong Marxist, the other a former propagandist for the Fascist regime, their encounter was billed as a clash of opposites. But what do these poets share? And what can they tell us about the poetics and politics of the twentieth century?
This book reads one by way of the other,
aligning their engagement with different temporalities and traditions, polities and geographies, languages and forms, evoked as utopian alternatives to the cultural and political crises of capitalist modernity. Part literary history, part comparative study, it offers a new and provocative perspective on these poets and the critical debates around them – in particular, on Pound’s Italian years and Pasolini’s use of Pound in his work. Their connection helps to understand the implications and legacies of their work today.
Trade Review“Sean Mark’s in-depth study of Pound and Pasolini, subtitled Poetics of Crisis, is a remarkable piece of scholarship, beautifully written, masterfully organised, and which reads almost like the plot of a detective novel … .” (Jonathan Pollock, Transatlantica Issue 2, 2023)
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Pound and/or Pasolini
Chapter 1: Family Portraits
Chapter 2: Creatures Facing Backwards
Chapter 3: Exposition
Chapter 4: An Economy of Signs
Chapter 5: Failure
Coda: Afterlives
Appendix
A. The Pasolini-Pound Interview
B. The Ronsisvalle-Pound Interview
