SOURCE: "The Third Dimension: Ezra Pound and Wassily Kandinsky," in Paideuma, Vol. 21, No. 3, Winter, 1992, pp. 63-77.

In the following essay, Faherty determines the influence of Kandinsky's theoretical writings on the work of the poet Ezra Pound.

The very first English critic to review Wassily Kandinsky's Über das Geistige in der Kunst was also the first to recognize its potential impact on the future of modern poetry. Writing in the arts journal Rhythm in the spring of 1912, shortly after Kandinsky's book first appeared on the shelves of Munich bookshops, Michael Sadler predicted that Kandinsky's theories of abstraction would not only alter the course of modern painting but modern verse as well. A writer himself, Sadler argued that poets need no longer concern themselves with description and mimesis but should feel free to experiment with the abstract possibilities of verse. However, Sadler was not the only one to recognize the...