Ezra Pound

For reasons unclear to me Ezra Pound has become a central figure in the intellectual life of this century. He was a nasty man, but there is no denying he was also a great poet, perhaps the greatest of the last century.

Here is a part of Canto CXVI, the last canto completed by Pound:

I have brought the great ball of crystal;
Who can lift it?
Can you enter the great acorn of light?
But the beauty is not the madness
Tho' my errors and wrecks lie about me.
And I am not a demigod,
I cannot make it cohere.