Though modernism sought new ways to convey ideas, it often drew from the legacies of older models.

Ezra Pound, one of the twentieth century’s most controversial artists, was a leading figure in English language poetry who harkened to the writing techniques of past ages. Pound, a promoter of such names as James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, and William Butler Yeats,also championed the idea of fragmentation that became typical in novels, the visual arts, and music. Comparisons are often drawn between Pound’s work and that of the ancient Greeks, whose striking verses have arrived to us in bits and pieces.

Though Pound’s work was regarded as forward-looking, it was constantly inspired by literary history. Pound’s 1911 rendering of ‘The Seafarer,’ for instance, was translated from a poem of the Exeter Book, one of the few surviving poetry manuscripts in Old English. Much larger projects such as the Cantos also drew from tradition that includes the epic wanderings of Odysseus and Asian philosophy.