Ezra Pound

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Lore & Background

Pound was born in 1885 in a two-story clapboard house in Hailey, Idaho Territory, the only child of Homer Loomis Pound and Isabel Weston. His paternal grandfather, Thaddeus Coleman Pound, was a Republican U.S. Representative and the 10th lieutenant governor of Wisconsin. Both sides of Pound's family emigrated from England in the 17th century. His early education began in dame schools: Miss Elliott's school in Jenkintown in 1892 and the Heathcock family's Chelten Hills School in Wyncote in 1893. He attended Wyncote Public School from September 1894, and his first publication—a limerick about William Jennings Bryan—appeared on 7 November 1896 in the *Jenkintown Times-Chronicle*. In 1897, aged 12, he transferred to Cheltenham Military Academy, where he wore an American Civil War-style uniform and was taught drilling and how to shoot. He attended the University of Pennsylvania in 1901 at age 15, then transferred to Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, graduating in 1905 with a PhB. He returned to Penn, earning an M.A. in Romance languages in 1906, but left without finishing his PhD after his fellowship was not renewed. From September 1907 he taught French and Spanish at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana, which he called 'the sixth circle of hell.' He was dismissed in January 1908 when his landladies found a woman in his room. Shocked at having been expelled, he left for Europe soon after, sailing from New York in March on the RMS *Slavonia*.

Reader's Guide

Pound's significance lies in his central role in the early modernist poetry movement, particularly through Imagism, and his discovery and promotion of major literary figures. He was responsible for the 1914 serialization of Joyce's *A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man*, the 1915 publication of Eliot's 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,' and the serialization from 1918 of Joyce's *Ulysses*. Hemingway wrote in 1932 that for poets born in the late 19th or early 20th century, not to be influenced by Pound would be 'like passing through a great blizzard and not feeling its cold.' Angered by the carnage of World War I, Pound blamed the war on finance capitalism, which he called 'usury.' He moved to Italy in 1924 and through the 1930s and 1940s promoted social credit, wrote for publications owned by British fascist Oswald Mosley, embraced Mussolini's fascism, and expressed support for Adolf Hitler. During World War II, he recorded hundreds of paid radio propaganda broadcasts for the fascist Italian government, attacking the U.S. government, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Britain, international finance, the arms industry, Jews, and others. He also praised both eugenics and the Holocaust in Italy, while urging American G.I.s to throw down their rifles and surrender. In 1945, Pound was captured by the Italian Resistance and handed over to the U.S. Army's Counterintelligence Corps, held pending extradition and prosecution for treason. He spent months in a U.S. military detention camp near Pisa, including three weeks in an outdoor steel cage. Ruled mentally unfit to stand trial, he was incarcerated for over 12 years at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C. While in custody, he continued work on *The Cantos*, published as *The Pisan Cantos* in 1948, for which he was awarded the Bollingen Prize for Poetry in 1949, leading to enormous controversy. After a campaign by fellow writers, he was released in 1958 and returned to Italy, where he posed for the press giving the Fascist salute and called the United States 'an insane asylum.' He remained in Italy until his death in 1972.

Did You Know?

• Pound's first publication was a limerick about William Jennings Bryan in the *Jenkintown Times-Chronicle* on 7 November 1896, when he was 11 years old.
• He hand-bound 25 of his poems for Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) in a collection he called *Hilda's Book*.
• While teaching at Wabash College, he was dismissed in January 1908 after his landladies found a woman in his room.
• He spent three weeks in an outdoor steel cage in a U.S. military detention camp near Pisa in 1945.
• After his release in 1958, he returned to Italy and posed for the press giving the Fascist salute.