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Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a collaborator in Fascist Italy and the Salò Republic during World War II.
- Overview
- Early life and career
- Success abroad
- A shaper of modern literature
Ezra Pound (born October 30, 1885, Hailey, Idaho, U.S.—died November 1, 1972, Venice, Italy) American poet and critic, a supremely discerning and energetic entrepreneur of the arts who did more than any other single figure to advance a “modern” movement in English and American literature. Pound promoted, and also occasionally helped to shape, the w...
Pound was born in a small mining town in Idaho, the only child of a Federal Land Office official, Homer Loomis Pound of Wisconsin, and Isabel Weston of New York City. About 1887 the family moved to the eastern states, and in June 1889, following Homer Pound’s appointment to the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia, they settled in nearby Wyncote, where Pound lived a typical middle-class childhood.
After two years at Cheltenham Military Academy, which he left without graduating, he attended a local high school. From there he went for two years (1901–03) to the University of Pennsylvania, where he met his lifelong friend, the poet William Carlos Williams. He took a Ph.B. (bachelor of philosophy) degree at Hamilton College, Clinton, New York, in 1905 and returned to the University of Pennsylvania for graduate work. He received an M.A. in June 1906 but withdrew from the university after working one more year toward his doctorate. He left with a knowledge of Latin, Greek, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Provençal, and Anglo-Saxon, as well as of English literature and grammar.
In the autumn of 1907, Pound became professor of Romance languages at Wabash Presbyterian College, Crawfordsville, Indiana. Although his general behaviour fairly reflected his Presbyterian upbringing, he was already writing poetry and was affecting a bohemian manner. His career came quickly to an end, and in February 1908, with light luggage and the manuscript of a book of poems that had been rejected by at least one American publisher, he set sail for Europe.
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He had been to Europe three times before, the third time alone in the summer of 1906, when he had gathered the material for his first three published articles: “Raphaelite Latin,” concerning the Latin poets of the Renaissance, and “Interesting French Publications,” concerning the troubadours (both published in the Book News Monthly, Philadelphia, September 1906), and “Burgos, a Dream City of Old Castile” (October issue).
In England, success came quickly to Pound. A book of poems, Personae, was published in April 1909; a second book, Exultations, followed in October; and a third book, The Spirit of Romance, based on lectures delivered in London (1909–10), was published in 1910.
After a trip home—a last desperate and unsuccessful attempt to make a literary life for himself in Philadelphia or New York City—he returned to Europe in February 1911, visiting Italy, Germany, and France. Toward the end of 1911 he met an English journalist, Alfred R. Orage, editor of the socialist weekly New Age, who opened its pages to him and provided him with a small but regular income during the next nine years.
Though his friend Yeats had already become famous, Pound succeeded in persuading him to adopt a new, leaner style of poetic composition. In 1914, the year of his marriage to Dorothy Shakespear, daughter of Yeats’s friend Olivia Shakespear, he began a collaboration with the then-unknown James Joyce. As unofficial editor of The Egoist (London) and later as London editor of The Little Review (New York City), he saw to the publication of Joyce’s novels Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses, thus spreading Joyce’s name and securing financial assistance for him. In that same year he gave T.S. Eliot a similar start in his career as poet and critic.
Pound continued to publish his own poetry (Ripostes, 1912; Lustra, 1916) and prose criticism (Pavannes and Divisions, 1918). From the literary remains of the great Orientalist Ernest Fenollosa, which had been presented to Pound in 1913, he succeeded in publishing highly acclaimed English versions of early Chinese poetry, Cathay (1915), and two volumes of Japanese Noh plays (1916–17) as well.
- Noel Stock
Oct 12, 2022 · Learn about Ezra Pound, one of the most influential and difficult poets of the 20th century, who founded Imagism and vorticism and wrote The Cantos. Explore his life, his contributions to Modernist poetry, and his controversial political views.
Apr 2, 2014 · Learn about Ezra Pound, a influential poet and critic who promoted modernism and Imagism in literature. Explore his life, works, friendships and controversies, from his early years in Idaho to his arrest in Italy.
Learn about the life and work of Ezra Pound, one of the founders of the imagist movement and a major modernist poet. Explore his famous poems, his influences, his controversies, and his legacy.
Learn about Ezra Pound, a modernist poet who influenced many of his contemporaries and was awarded the Bollingen Prize for his Pisan Cantos. Explore his life, works, and legacy on this web page.
Read Pound's influential writings on poetic theory and practice, including his definition of imagism and his advice to aspiring poets. Learn about his life, his works, and his controversies in this introduction by the Poetry Foundation.
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