Ezra Pound

From Philosopedia

Ezra Pound in 1913

Ezra Pound (30 October 1885 - 1 November 1972)

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was born in Hailey, Idaho Territory, to Isabel Weston Pound and U. S. Mint assayer Homer Loomis, the grandson of Wisconsin's Lieutenant Governor Thaddeus C. Pound.

The poet, who would become an expatriate, critic, intellectual, and a major figure of the Modernist movement in the first half of the 20th century, moved as an 18-month-old to Wyncote in the suburbs of Philadelphia, where at the age of 15 he enrolled at the University Pennsylvania. Two years later he transferred to Hamilton College, receiving his Ph. D. in 1905, then returned to the University of Pennsylvania, completing in 1906 an M.A. in Romantic philology.

While at the University of Penn, he met and became friends with William Carlos Williams and Hilda Doolittle (H.D.), to whom he was engaged for a short time. Pound taught in Crawfordsville, Indiana, at Wabash College - when a stranded actress spent the night in his room, the scandal resulted in his leaving his position after four months.

In 1908 he moved to Europe, worked for a time as a tour guide in Gibraltar, settled in London, and self-published A Lume Spento.

Pound worked as a journalist and editor, becoming part of literary movements in London, where his publications included Personae (1909) and Homage to Sextus Propertius (1919).

In 1920 he moved to Paris, becoming friends with Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Leger, and others of the Dada and Surrealist movements. He asked Ernest Hemingway to teach him to box, and Hemingway later wrote in A Moveable Feast, "I was never able to teach him to throw a left hook."

In 1922 he became involved with Olga Rudge, a violinist - with Dorothy Shakespear, the three became a ménage à trois which lasted until the end of his life. His Poems, 1918-1921 was reviewed by Richard Le Gallienne in The New York Times, who called him an artist of the ivory tower.

In 1924 he made his home in Italy, where he caused resentment by making pro-Fascist broadcasts in the early stages of World War II.

Pound was indicted for treason by the United States government in 1945 but was acquitted.

In 1945 he was escorted back to America and was indicted for treason but, judged insane, was placed in an asylum for twelve years. Released in 1958, he returned to Italy. Here, regarded as an experimental poet, he was called by T. S. Eliot the motivating force behind modern poetry. His main work is The Cantos, a loosely knit series of poems, which he began during World War I and that were published in many installments (1930 to 1950).

Pound is buried in the San Michele Cemetery on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, Italy.

Pound died in Venice, where he is buried.

Works of Poetry

A Lume Spento (1908)

Exultations and Personae (1909)

Provenca (1910)

Canzoni (1911)

Ripostes (1912)

Cathay (1915)

Lustra (1916)

Quia Pauper Amavi (1918)

Homage to Sextus Propertius (1919)

Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920)

Pisan Cantos (1948)

Cantos (1970)

Operas

The Testament of François Villon (1923)

Cavalcanti (1923).

(Hear a recording of Pound reading his poetry. For information about the Ezra Pound Controversy, see entry for Winfred Overholser.)