Pound, Ezra (Weston Loomis)

Pound, Ezra [Weston Loomis] (1885–1972), Idaho‐born poet and critic, reared in Pennsylvania, attended the University of Pennsylvania and Hamilton College, and taught briefly at Wabash College, until dismissed because of his impatience with academic ways, despite his scholarly ability. He went to Italy (1908), where his first book, A Lume Spento [“a dim light”] (1908), was published. He later lived in London (1908–20), in Paris (1920–24), and until the end of World War II at Rapallo, Italy.

In 1909 he published two volumes of verse, Personae and Exultations (poems from both reprinted as Personae, 1926), whose intensity and disciplined metrical experimentation attracted attention, as did his knowledge of medieval literature, Provençal singers, and troubadour ballads. Provença (1910), Canzoni (1911), and Ripostes (1912) extended the paths he had marked for himself, but also indicated his tendency to allow esoteric lore to become an unduly important part of his poetry. This trend continues in his translation of The Sonnets and Ballate of Guido Cavalcanti (1912); Cathay (1915), translations from the Chinese, based on notes of Fenollosa; Umbra (1920); translations and selections from some of his earlier poems; and Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920).

He began to scatter his interests and became a leader of the Imagists, and sponsored diverse authors in the anthologies and little magazines that he helped edit. He established the importance of such journals as Poetry and The Little Review, and wrote much about his successive enthusiasms, later generally acknowledged as significant. Those he championed include T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Tagore, the musician George Antheil, and the sculptor Gaudier‐Brzeska.

Lustra (1916), including earlier work, was followed by Quia Pauper Amavi (1919), containing the first three cantos of a lengthy work, with a flexible, conversation‐like structure. His later poetry was almost entirely devoted to these Cantos, finally collected in 1970. They are so filled with esoteric lore and recondite theories that they often seem pedantic and confusing, yet they have had a tremendous influence on modern poetry, and works that are indebted to them include The Waste Land, The Bridge, and Conquistador.

Pound's prose includes The Spirit of Romance (1910); Certain Noble Plays of Japan (1916) and Noh—or, Accomplishment (1916), edited from the notes of Fenollosa, whose literary executor he was; Gaudier‐Brzeska (1916), a biography; Pavannes and Divisions (1918); Instigations (1920); Indiscretions (1923); Antheil and the Treatise on Harmony (1924); ABC of Economics (1933); ABC of Reading (1934); Make It New (1934); Jeffersonand/or Mussolini (1935); Polite Essays (1937); Guide to Kulchur (1938, revised 1952); Money Pamphlets by Pound (1950–52); The Literary Essays (1954), collected with an introduction by T.S. Eliot; Pavannes and Divagations (1958); and Impact, Essays on Ignorance and the Decline of American Civilization (1960), a compilation on politics, economics, and literature. His Letters, 1907–41 was published in 1950. Later translations include Confucius: The Unwobbling Pivot and the Great Digest (1947); Confucian Analects (1951); The Classic Anthology (1954), Chinese poems; Great Digest and the Unwobbling Pivot (1954); and The Women of Trachis (1956), a version of Sophocles' play. Other late published books include Patria Mia, reflections on American culture, issued in The New Age in installments (1912) and as a book in 1950, and Redondillas, a poem of 114 lines issued in Australia in 1967 and in the U.S. in a 110‐copy edition (1968).

Pound, who termed himself a “Jeffersonian Republican,” professed to find “the heritage of Jefferson” in Mussolini's Italy, and prior to World War II espoused political views that included opposition to capitalism, the Jews, and the English, and support of the principle of censorship. During the war he broadcast Fascist propaganda over the Rome radio, and was afterward returned to the U.S. to face trial for treason. Adjudged to be of unsound mind, he was committed (1946–58) to a sanitarium instead of being tried. When the indictment was finally withdrawn he was released, and he returned to Italy.