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The center of the book closely examines Pound’s adaptation of Emerson’s philosophy. The philosophy of poetry has always careened from the ideal to the material, but the Poundian school of American poetry does not represent a descent into abstraction, in spite of the withdrawal of the poet as a figure in the poem. Pursuing the tradition of Emerson’s “mystical empiricism,” Pound develops an “impossible” poetics, one which projects an otherworldly energy onto the “objective” world of images, things, and borrowed texts. His career, from Personae to The Cantos, shows increasing frustration with his role as a sage or prophet denied a poetic presence. As the transcendent nature of his poetry went unrecognized, he became increasingly ambitious, ultimately developing an authoritarian political vision in the hopes of restoring the mystical bases of society—and his own role as its architect.
The frustration of a seer who cannot communicate inexpressible truths is not exclusive to mystics and poets; it is a part of the human condition. To emphasize its universality, I resort to contemporary philosophy, reviewing Emmanuel Levinas’ and Jean-Luc Nancy’s treatment of the problem of infinity and community. Their analysis illuminates the tensions in the writings of Emerson and Pound and forecasts the more successful approaches of postmodern objectivists, typified by William Carlos Williams, Charles Olson, and the Black Mountain Poets. The experimental poetics of these figures forge a midpoint between the poet’s infinite consciousness and the finite reader (and world) to whom the poem is addressed.
Eventually, in the epic American works after The Cantos, the “anonymous” poet finds a home as the embodiment of a city (and, by extension, the world). These epics, true to Emerson’s belief in the poet’s responsibility to renew American society, depict a troubled polis in need of renewal. Encompassing every aspect of life in a city, these works, through their very disjunctive poetics, suggest a way that an alienated and spiritless society can be unified. In both Paterson and The Maximus Poems, a living, guiding spirit, represented symbolically by the poet, embodies the place: its geography, history, and population. Both books ground the Romantic faith in mythology in the realities of the physical world. These works are the culmination of the Romantic striving towards a renewed liberal society, one with a transcendental core.