| Ezra (Loomis) Pound - (1885--1972)
Born on October 30, 1885 in Hailey,
Idaho. He was an American avant-garde poet, critic, and translator, who exerted an
enormous influence on the development of English and American poetry and criticism in the
early 20th century.
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Ezra Pound was an American
avant-garde poet, critic, and translator. He exerted an enormous influence on the
development of English and American poetry and criticism in the early 20th century. Ezra
studied chiefly at the University of Pennsylvania, then traveled widely in Europe, working
as a journalist and editor. From 1908 to 1920 he lived in London, where he served as a
foreign correspondent for the American magazines Poetry and The Little Review. He became
friends with and edited the works of several avant-garde authors writing in England. These
included: T. S. Eliot, William Butler Yeats, and James Joyce. Pound also set forth the
theories behind the literary movement that came to be known as imagism.
In 1909 he published Personae. This collection of verses led him to quickly become a
leader of the American expatriate literary circle that included the writers Gertrude Stein
and Ernest Hemingway. In 1919 he published Homage to Sextus Propertius. He also worked for
the American literary magazine The Dial. He translated from Italian, Chinese, and Japanese
literature.
In 1924 Pound settled in Rapallo, Italy. From there he caused resentment by making
pro-Fascist broadcasts in the early stages of World War 2. He was arrested by the
Americans in 1945, declared psychologically unfit to stand trial for treason, and confined
to a mental hospital in Washington, D.C. When he was released in 1958, he returned to
Italy, where he lived until his death.
Pound was an experimental poet, whom T S Eliot regarded as the motivating force behind
modern poetry. His main work is The Cantos , a loosely knit series of poems, which he
began during World War 1, and which were published in many installments (1930--59). Pound
drew his themes from Confucian ethics, classical mythology, economic theory, and other
seemingly disparate sources in his effort to interpret cultural history. Ezra Pound gained
great notoriety and lasting fame by being not only a brilliant poet but an unrepentant
fascist with very strange, almost medieval notions about economics.
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