Cathay

«Sometimes dismissed by people who often haven’t read his work but have heard about his late-in-life malignant anti-Semitic diatribes, Ezra Pound changed poetry in English almost single-handedly, supporting, publishing, and championing legions of other artists and writers— including George Oppen, Charles Reznikoff, and Louis Zukofsky, all Jews, as well as James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, H.D., W. B. Yeats, and Gaudier-Brzeska, among so many others. His translation practice and its extraordinary range— ancient Greek and Latin, classical Chinese, and half a dozen contemporary and vanished European languages—radically altered the reception of translation into English and made a permanent place for it. Cathay, despite errors, has been perhaps the most influential poetry translation into English ever, and it is still discussed at any international conference on translation. Admired by poets and critics such as Wei Lim Yip, Yang Liang, and Zhaming Qian, Cathay delivers a shockingly fresh and contemporary emotional power that few who read it can forget.» (from the epilogue of Forrest Gander, Cathay, Buenos Aires Poetry, October 2020).