Invoking the Spirits: The Occult Influences In Ezra Pound's Pisan Cantos

Katrina Makkouk's study of modernist poet Ezra Pound's Pisan Cantos is a great introduction to the work of the poet in general, and to his masterpiece The Cantos specifically. Written in incarceration right after WW2, Pound's Pisan Cantos show his desire to penetrate deeper into the mysteries of history, memory, and mythology. Drawing from the occult inspiration from his early mentor, W.B. Yeats, Pound went into an inner exile to retrieve whatever he needed to banish the restraining outer circumstances, and to finish his epic poem.

The how and why of magic can so often be mysterious and enigmatic. For some, it does not provide entrance into an unseen world such as those sought out by Yeats. Rather, it enables the user to link themselves to the past, present, and future, and to fully connect oneself to what is beyond the ordinary reality in which we find ourselves. These threads of memory and magic that are woven throughout The Pisans makes this set of cantos the most unique amongst the other stars of Pound's epic writing.