Ezra Pound Biography and List of Works

American poet and critic often called "the poet's poet" because of his profound influence on 20th century writing in English. Pound believed that poetry was the highest of arts. He challenged many of the commonly held views of his time and spent 12 years in an American mental hospital.

"Let us build here an exquisite friendship,
The flame, the autumn, and the green rose of love
Fought out their strife here, 'tis a place of wonder;
Where these have been, meet 'tis, the ground is holy."
('The Altar')

Pound was born in Hailey, Idaho. He was brought up in Wyncote, Philadelphia, where his father was the assistant assayer for the US Mint. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania, and befriended the young William Carlos Williams. From 1903 to 1906 Pound studied Anglo-Saxon and Romance languages at Hamilton College. His teaching career at Wabash College in India was cut short in1907 because he had entertained an actress in his room.

In 1908 he travelled widely throughout Europe, working as a journalist. His first book of poems, A LUME SPENTO, appeared in 1908. After its publication Pound settled in London, where he founded, with Richard Aldinbgton and others, the literary Imagism, and with Wyndham Lewis and the sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Vorticism. He helped Wyndham Lewis, T.S. Eliot, and James Joyce publish their works in the magazines Egoist and Poetry. Pound played a crucial role in the editing of Eliot's The Waste Land. In 1914 he married the artist Dorothy Shakespeare, with whom he had a son. In 1922 Pound started his lifelong relationship with the violinist Olga Rudge. From this creative, volcanic period dates one of Pound's most widely read poems, 'HOMAGE TO SEXTUS PROPERTIUS (1919).

Pound has been called the 'inventor' of Chinese poetry for our time. Beginning in 1913 with the notebooks of Ernest Fenollosa, he pursued a lifelong study of ancient Chinese texts, and translated the writings of Confucius, amongst others. Dante and Homer became other sources for inspiration, especially Dante's journey through the realms, which has parallels with Pound's examination of individual experiences in THE CANTOS.

In 1920 Pound moved to Paris and four years later her settled in Italy, where he lived for over 20 years. In 1933 he met Mussolini and saw in him the long-needed economic and social reformer. In his anti-Semitic statements Pound agreed with those who believed that Jewish financiers were exploiting the economic system, and during World War II he made a series of radio broadcasts that were openly fascist. In 1945 he was arrested by the U.S. forces, tried and pronounced insane. Subsequently Pound spent 12 years incarcerated in a hospital for the criminally insane in Washington, D.C. During this period he received the 1949 Bollingen Prize for his Pisan Cantos. After he was released, he returned to Italy, where he spent his remaining years. Pound died on November 1, 1972 in Venice. According to Katherine Anne Porter, "Pound was one of the most opinionated and unselfish men who ever lived, and he made friends and enemies everywhere by the simple exercise of the classic American constitutional right of free speech." (The Letters of E.P., 1907-1941, New York Times Book Reviwe, 29 Oct. 1950)

Pound published over 70 books and translated Japanese plays and Chinese poetry. The Cantos, a series of poems that he began in the 1920s, and worked on throughout his life, are considered among his best works. Its final volume, LATE CANTOS AND FRAGMENTS, appeared in 1969. In The Cantos Pound records the poet's spiritual quest for transcendence, and his intellectual search for worldly wisdom. Just as Beatrice guided Dante's pilgrim, so classical goddesses appear in The Cantos. Pound also presents mythical, historical, and contemporary figures, mirroring the poetry and ideas of the past and present.

"Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree."

As an essayist Pound's interest was mainly poetry. From the mid-1920s he examined the ways economic systems promote or debase culture. Pound hoped that fascism could establish the sort of society in which the arts could flourish. He argued that poetry is not 'entertainment', and as an elitist he did not appreciate the common reader. Pound considered American culture isolated from the traditions that make the arts possible, and depicted Walt Whitman as an "exceedingly nauseating pill". Among his most influential works are the ABC OF READING (1934), which is said to have established the modernist poetic technique and THE CHINESE WRITTEN CHARACTER AS A MEDIUM FOR POETRY (publ. 1936), compiled from the notes of Ernest Fenollosa.

For further reading: The Poetry of Ezra Pound by H. Kenner (1951); Ideas into Action by C. Emery (1958); Ezra Pound by Charles Norman (1960, rev. 1969); The Life of Ezra Pound by N. Stock (1970); The Pound Era by Hugh Kenner (1972); Ezra Pound: the Last Rower by C. David Heyman (1976); Ezra Pound and the Pisan Cantos by A. Woodward (1980); Ezra Pound: the Solitary Volcano by John Tytell (1987); Ezra Pound as Literary Critic by K.K. Ruthven (1991); ABC of Influence: Ezra Pound and the Remaking of American Poetic Traditon by Christopher Beach (1992); The Birth of Modernism by Leon Surette (1993); Ezra Pound as Critic by G. Singh (1994); The Cmbridge Companion to Ezra Pound, ed. by Ira B, Nadel (1999) - See also: Fernando Pessoa, R. Tagore, T.S. Eliot, whom Pound met in 1914 and started to reform poetic diction with him.

Imagism: a movement of American and English poets whose verse was characterized by concrete language and figures of speech, modern subject matter, freedom in the use of meter, and avoidance of mystical themes. Members of the movement included Hilda Doolittle, Richard Aldington, F.S. Flint, T.E. Hulme, John Gould Fletcher, Harriet Monroa, Amy Lowell. Influenced also Conrad Aiken, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, D.H. Lawrence, T.S. Eliot

Translation works:

A LUME SPENTO, (1908)
THE SPIRIT OF ROMANCE, (1910)