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Ezra Pound |
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Ezra Loomis Pound (1885-1972), the co-founder of
modernism and America's most contentious poet was born in
Halley,
Idaho, educated at Cheltenham College and at Pennsylvania
University, transferring to Hamilton College to gain an
MA in 1905. He was appointed Instructor in French and Spanish
at Wabash College in 1907, but dismissed a year later. Pound
then went to London,
becoming a noted
figure in the literary avant-garde,
pamphleteering
and writing
the poetry
for which he is best remembered. He married, but also began
a lifelong liaison with Olga Rudge. After W.W.I, Pound retired
to Italy, where he lived quietly on his wife's
inheritance and applied himself to translation and writing
the Cantos.
Dreaming of a new society, and sympathetic to Mussolini,
Pound broadcast
for the Axis powers during W.W.II, was incarcerated as a
POW in 1945 and then as an inmate of St.
Elizabeth's mental hospital in Washington, DC Released
in 1958, after his Pisan Cantos won the Bollingen
Award, Pound returned to Italy, only briefly leaving
to attend Eliot's funeral and see friends in Paris and the
States. Depressed and finally silent,
he died in Venice, and is buried there.
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Pound and modernism |
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Pound was not the first truly American poet — that
honour goes to Whitman,
or possibly Poe,
Dickinson,
Lowell
or Whittier,
but he created poetry that seems destined to last, set translation
on new tracks, and continues to be a potent influence.
About the man views are more mixed — many detested
the egoism and posing
— but Pound supported his protégés, and
furthered
several
careers. He campaigned for a precise poetic language,
founding Vorticism and flirting with Dadaism. To this early
phase belong some of the best work of modernism: The
Seafarer, Lament
of the Frontier Guard, The
River Merchant's Wife, Homage to Sextus
Propertius and possibly parts of Hugh
Selwyn Mauberly and the Cantos.
Pound seemed to get beneath
the skin of his characters, recreating poetry from only
the flimsiest understanding of the language.
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Ezra Pound
today |
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Pound's interests shifted after 1920 to economics and government,
but he also applied himself to the Cantos,
whose sprawling 23,000 lines many see as the great poetry
achievement of the twentieth century, influencing Zukofsky,
the projective
verse school, Wright,
Bly,
Duncan,
Ashbery
and many contemporary
figures. The Cantos juxtapose voices from the whole range
of human existence, though dwelling much on the renaissance,
Chinese history and eighteenth century monetary policies.
The poem is a kaleidoscope of vivid fragments, where voices
speak for themselves, giving immediacy and a richness of
texture. Later Cantos take the process further, using "ideograms"
to make presentations more direct and author-independent
— themes which Postmodernism explores. And however
baffling at first, many passages achieved a rare beauty
of phrasing, opening doors to poets
escaping from strict forms.
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Reading Pound |
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Pound's best verse is collected in Collected Shorter
Poems (1968), The Cantos of Ezra Pound (1975)
and Selected Poems 1908-1959 (1975). He published
over 70
books: poetry,
prose, important
translations,
and around these has grown an enormous critical literature,
for which see bibliographies at ja
university, kobe
university, and pal.
The poetry is made difficult by art
for art's sake colourings, diversity
of interests, cryptic
or obscure
name-dropping, abrupt juxtaposition, ellipsis,
private
allusion, and doubtful
scholarship — all common
in contemporary poetry. Pound's politics
can still raise hackles: his anti-Semitism
and fascism,
though
not
unusual at the time, do not accord with liberal democracy,
and still less with political
correctness. Scholars will know these sites: Paideuma,
Kobe
University, Buffalo,
NPF
Bulletin Board.
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