Introduction: Six Ways a Sunday

Recent scholarship on Ezra Pound has brought more and more attention to his international reputation as a (if not the) ground-breaking modernist poet of the twentieth century – not not in his poetry, but in his critical thinking, practice and theory of translation, international correspondence, and cross-cultural collaborations, as well as in his transnational engagement in culture and the arts. This essay introduces fourteen new essays that offer new cross-cultural interpretations of Pound’s thinking and poetics, as well as new considerations of his critical reception globally. Although terms such as “cross-cultural,” “globalism,” “transnationalism,” and “internationalism” remain fluid in literary studies and often stir controversy, especially in debates about Pound’s role as a modernist, worldwide he has remained at the center of such discussions for the last century. The introduction argues how this collection, without attempting to be comprehensive, offers testimony to the truly cross-cultural reach of Pound’s contributions. His cross-culturalism encompasses not only the international scope of his subject matter, methods, translations from classical and modern languages, and editorial work, but also to the diverse historical, social, ideological, interdisciplinary, and theoretical contexts in which his works continue to offer insight and generate strong interest.