While Pound was living in Venice in 1908, as well as putting together and getting published
A Lume Spento, his first collection of poems, he built up a handwritten compilation of other poems in a manuscript that has subsequently become known as
The San Trovaso Notebook. When Pound transferred to London later that year, he raided the notebook for the majority of the poems in his second collection,
A Quinzaine For This Yule, initially by Pollock and Co. The book was eventually promoted out of Elkin Mathews's bookshop, an influential literary London venue, but was again self-financed. The title reveals Pound's penchant for the linguistically obscure: “quinzaine” is an archaic term relating to the fifteen days of a religious festival. Since there are precisely fifteen poems in the…
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Citation: Wilson, Peter. "A Quinzaine for this Yule". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 08 October 2003 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=8960, accessed 27 November 2024.]
