No stu­dent of mod­ernism, no lover of mod­ern poet­ry, can avoid Ezra Pound, or the prob­lem that is Ezra Pound. Although a noto­ri­ous and enthu­si­as­tic boost­er of Mussolini’s Ital­ian state dur­ing the Sec­ond World War, Pound’s influ­ence over the shape and char­ac­ter of Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry always seems to trump his regret­table, if not par­tic­u­lar­ly sur­pris­ing, pol­i­tics. T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, H.D.—all are deeply indebt­ed to Pound. His attempts to bridge East­ern and West­ern aes­thet­ics are pro­found, and his own poet­ry, informed by his devo­tion to Chi­nese poet­ics and immer­sion in the Euro­pean canon, com­pris­es an often bril­liant, gen­er­al­ly intim­i­dat­ing body of work.

Over the course of five decades, dur­ing each of Pounds’ var­i­ous phases—as lit­er­ary impre­sario, lan­guage schol­ar, edi­tor, and deeply con­tro­ver­sial weirdo—he was hard at work on what became known as The Can­tos, a long, loose­ly con­nect­ed series of poet­ic chap­ters in Eng­lish, Chi­nese, Ital­ian that were pub­lished at var­i­ous times in var­i­ous forms. Pound’s tra­vails as the author of this long and exceed­ing­ly dif­fi­cult series may be the reward of a fool and his fol­ly (as his col­leagues thought) or the rocky, lone­ly path of genius, unap­pre­ci­at­ed in its time. I’m not sure I would rec­om­mend him as the lat­ter, but I’ve often found not only his pol­i­tics, but also his delib­er­ate obscu­ri­ty a stum­bling block. And yet, there may be no sub­sti­tute for hear­ing poet­ry read aloud, some­times best by its author, who knows every nuance. At the top, hear Pound read “Can­to I,” built of clas­si­cal mod­els on Anglo-Sax­on scaf­fold­ing. Direct­ly above, Pound reads from a chap­ter pub­lished almost ten years lat­er. His voice is more ragged and qua­ver­ing, and he rails against usury, a theme close to his often anti-Semit­ic eco­nom­ic the­o­ries. You can hear dozens more record­ings of Pound, made from 1939 to the year of his death, 1972, at the Penn Sound archive. And also over at UBUweb.

You can find more read­ings of clas­sic poems in the Poet­ry sec­tion of our Free Audio Books col­lec­tion. Oth­er works by Pound can be found in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Ernest Hem­ing­way Writes of His Fas­cist Friend Ezra Pound: “He Deserves Pun­ish­ment and Dis­grace” (1943)

Ezra Pound’s Fiery 1939 Read­ing of His Ear­ly Poem, ‘Ses­ti­na: Altaforte’

Pier Pao­lo Pasoli­ni Talks and Reads Poet­ry with Ezra Pound (1967)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

The world tends to think rather loose­ly about the con­cepts of Los Ange­les, Hol­ly­wood, and the motion pic­ture indus­try, throw­ing them around, run­ning them togeth­er, nam­ing one when they mean anoth­er — still, noth­ing a brac­ing splash of Charles Bukows­ki can’t sort out. Above, the famous Los Ange­les-res­i­dent poet, a fig­ure as sham­bol­i­cal­ly glo­ri­ous and stealth­ily inspir­ing as much of the city itself, gives a brief back-seat tour of Hol­ly­wood. No, he does­n’t take us past the movie stu­dios, nor the Walk of Fame, nor the site of Schwab’s Phar­ma­cy. He stays clos­er to home — his home, the sto­ried bun­ga­low at 5124 De Long­pre Avenue. We see his neigh­bor­hood, his neck of Hol­ly­wood, the north­west­ern dis­trict of vast Los Ange­les that con­tains much less of the capital‑I Indus­try than you’d think, but more of gen­uine (if often grotesque) inter­est.

“That’s a lady for­tune teller there,” Bukows­ki says, ges­tur­ing toward one of the mod­est hous­es around him. “I went in there one time. She read my palm. She said, ‘You’re an alco­holic.’ ‘Real­ly? Do I gam­ble, too?’ ‘Yes, you gam­ble. That’ll be five dol­lars.’ ” The dri­ver con­tin­ues down Hol­ly­wood’s epony­mous boule­vard, pass­ing West­ern Avenue, which gets the poet remem­ber­ing more: “There used to be cement bench­es out front, and all the insane peo­ple would sit there. The street peo­ple. They’d talk to each oth­er all day long.” We pass impor­tant land­marks as well: “There’s the old Sex Shop. Keeps chang­ing hands.” He even points out the wheel­ers and deal­ers liv­ing amid this stretch of bars, broth­els, and burg­er stands: “There’s a woman who’s not a hook­er. There’s a dope deal­er.” Give me Bukowski’s Hol­ly­wood tour over those dou­ble-deck­er bus­es you see around town, their con­duc­tors bark­ing about minor celebri­ty sight­ings, any day. “I’ve been to this liquor store many a time,” Bukows­ki notes. “Many a time.”

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Charles Bukows­ki Tells the Sto­ry of His Worst Hang­over Ever

“Don’t Try”: Charles Bukowski’s Con­cise Phi­los­o­phy of Art and Life

Five Cul­tur­al Tours of Los Ange­les

The Last (Faxed) Poem of Charles Bukows­ki

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.