Personae is the title Pound gave to his collected shorter poems, first published as a small collection by Elkin Mathews in 1909 and then expanded into the definitive edition published by Boni & Liveright in 1926 (later taken over by New Directions). The 1926 edition gathers virtually all of Pound’s shorter poems from 1908 to 1920 — the period in which he invented Imagism, championed Vorticism, revolutionized translation, and transformed the possibilities of English-language poetry.
The Poems
The collection includes work from six earlier volumes, arranged roughly chronologically:
Early work (1908-1912) — Provençal imitations, dramatic monologues in the voices of medieval troubadours, exercises in archaic diction that already show Pound’s extraordinary ear and his determination to make the past speak in the present.
Imagist poems (1912-1914) — “In a Station of the Metro” (perhaps the most famous short poem of the twentieth century: “The apparition of these faces in the crowd; / Petals on a wet, black bough”), “The Return,” “The Garden,” “Liu Ch’e.” These poems are Pound’s purest achievement: direct treatment of the thing, no word that does not contribute, the musical phrase rather than the metronome.
Cathay (1915) — Pound’s translations from the Chinese (working from Ernest Fenollosa’s notebooks), which T.S. Eliot called “the invention of Chinese poetry for our time.” These are not scholarly translations but acts of poetic creation: Pound’s English captures something the originals possess that literal translation cannot.
“Homage to Sextus Propertius” (1919) — a creative translation of the Roman elegist that infuriated classicists (the Latinity is deliberately “wrong”) and delighted poets. Pound uses Propertius to comment on empire, on the poet’s relationship to power, and on the futility of patriotic art.
“Hugh Selwyn Mauberley” (1920) — Pound’s farewell to London, a sequence in which a fictional poet’s failure mirrors Pound’s disillusionment with English literary culture. It is his most polished long sequence and, some critics argue, his finest sustained achievement.
Significance
Personae documents the most productive decade in modern English-language poetry. Between 1912 and 1920, Pound effectively remade the art: he promulgated Imagism’s three principles, edited Eliot’s Waste Land, discovered and promoted Joyce and Lewis, and wrote the poems that demonstrated what his principles looked like in practice.
The collection remains the essential Pound for most readers — more accessible than The Cantos, more varied than any single volume, and containing poem after poem that has entered the permanent English anthology.
Collecting Personae
The 1926 Boni & Liveright edition: The definitive collected edition. Black cloth with gold lettering. Dust jacket (scarce).
Identification points:
- Boni & Liveright imprint
- “First edition” stated
- 231 pages
- Collects poems from six previous volumes
Market values: Fine copies in dust jacket bring $1,000–$3,000. The jacket is extremely scarce.
The 1909 Elkin Mathews Personae (the original slim volume, only 27 poems): $2,000–$5,000 — Pound’s first commercially published book.
New Directions editions (various dates from 1949): The standard text for subsequent generations. First New Directions printings bring $50–$150.
Signed copies of the 1926 edition: $3,000–$8,000. Pound signed freely during his London years.
The book’s status as the essential Pound — the volume that every poetry reader needs — ensures permanent demand across multiple editions and printings.