''A Quinzaine for this Yule'' (or ''A Quinzaine for this Yule: Being Selected from a Venetian Sketch-book "San Trovaso."'') is a collection of

poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...

by Ezra Pound.

Content

The title refers to an archaic word for the fifteenth day after a feast day, or a verse with fifteen syllables.

Yule Yule, actually Yuletide ("Yule time") is a festival observed by the historical Germanic peoples, later undergoing Christianised reformulation resulting in the now better-known Christmastide. The earliest references to Yule are by way of indi ...

is a traditional word for a winter religious festival. The book is 27 pages long and contains 15 poems. It was published in 1908 by Pollock and Co.

Background

When Pound was working on getting his first collection, '' A Lume Spento'', published while in

Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges. The isla ...

, he kept a notebook commonly known as the San Trovaso notebook that contained drafts of poetry. When he returned to

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

towards the end of 1908, it was this notebook that he used as the basis of a new poetry collection. The book was, like his first, self-financed, though it was promoted out of the shop of

Charles Elkin Mathews Charles Elkin Mathews (1851 – 10 November 1921) was a British publisher and bookseller who played an important role in the literary life of London in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Mathews was born in Gravesend, and learned his tra ...

Reception

Robert Stark notes that "he rejects many of the conventionally poetic qualities of his earliest verse" claiming that Pound attempted for a sort of "literary barbarianism". Contemporary reviews, such as in ''

Punch Punch commonly refers to: * Punch (combat), a strike made using the hand closed into a fist * Punch (drink), a wide assortment of drinks, non-alcoholic or alcoholic, generally containing fruit or fruit juice Punch may also refer to: Places * Pun ...

'', noted (referring collectively to ''A Quinzaine'', ''A Lume Spento'', ''Exultations,'' and ''Personae'') that " ound'sverse is the most remarkable thing in poetry since Robert Browning".

Sources

{{DEFAULTSORT:Quinzaine for this Yule, The British poetry collections Poetry by Ezra Pound 1908 poetry books Yule