Ezra Pound Popular Books

Ezra Pound Biography & Facts

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. His works include Ripostes (1912), Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920), and his 800-page epic poem, The Cantos (c. 1917–1962).Pound's contribution to poetry began in the early 20th century with his role in developing Imagism, a movement stressing precision and economy of language. Working in London as foreign editor of several American literary magazines, he helped discover and shape the work of contemporaries such as Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, and James Joyce. 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 an economic theory known as social credit, wrote for publications owned by the British fascist Sir Oswald Mosley, embraced Benito Mussolini's fascism, and expressed support for Adolf Hitler. During World War II, Pound recorded hundreds of paid radio propaganda broadcasts for the Italian government, including in German-occupied Italy, in which he attacked the United States Federal Government, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Great Britain, international finance, munitions makers, arms dealers, Jews, and others, as abettors and prolongers of the war. He also praised both Eugenics and the Holocaust in Italy, while urging American GIs 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, who held him pending extradition and prosecution based on an indictment 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, Pound was incarcerated for over 12 years at St. Elizabeths psychiatric hospital in Washington, D.C., whose doctors viewed Pound as a narcissist and a psychopath, but otherwise completely sane. While in custody in Italy, Pound began work on sections of The Cantos, which were published as The Pisan Cantos (1948), for which he was awarded the Bollingen Prize for Poetry in 1949 by the Library of Congress, causing enormous controversy. After a campaign by his fellow writers, he was released from St. Elizabeth's in 1958 and returned to Italy, where he posed for the press giving the Fascist salute and called America "an insane asylum". Pound remained in Italy until his death in 1972. His economic and political views have ensured that his life and literary legacy remain highly controversial. Early life and education (1885–1908) Family background Pound was born in 1885 in a two-story clapboard house in Hailey, Idaho Territory, the only child of Homer Loomis Pound (1858–1942) and Isabel Weston (1860–1948), who married in 1884. Homer had worked in Hailey since 1883 as registrar of the United States General Land Office. Pound's grandfather, Thaddeus Coleman Pound, a Republican Congressman and the 10th Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin, had secured him the appointment. Homer had previously worked for Thaddeus in the lumber business.Both sides of Pound's family emigrated from England in the 17th century. On his father's side, the immigrant ancestor was John Pound, a Quaker who arrived from England around 1650. Ezra's paternal grandmother, Susan Angevine Loomis, married Thaddeus Coleman Pound. On his mother's side, Pound was descended from William Wadsworth, a Puritan who emigrated to Boston on the Lion in 1632. Captain Joseph Wadsworth helped to write the first Connecticut constitution. The Wadsworths married into the Westons of New York; Harding Weston and Mary Parker were Pound's maternal grandparents. After serving in the military, Harding remained unemployed, so his brother Ezra Weston and Ezra's wife, Frances Amelia Wessells Freer (Aunt Frank), helped to look after Isabel, Pound's mother. Early education Isabel Pound was unhappy in Hailey and took Ezra with her to New York in 1887 when he was 18 months old. Her husband followed and found a job as an assayer at the Philadelphia Mint. After a move to 417 Walnut Street in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, the family bought a six-bedroom house in 1893 at 166 Fernbrook Avenue, Wyncote. Pound's 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. Known as "Ra" (pronounced "Ray"), he attended Wyncote Public School from September 1894. His first publication was on 7 November 1896 in the Jenkintown Times-Chronicle ("by E. L. Pound, Wyncote, aged 11 years"), a limerick about William Jennings Bryan, who had just lost the 1896 presidential election.In 1897, aged 12, he transferred to Cheltenham Military Academy (CMA), where he wore an American Civil War-style uniform and was taught drilling and how to shoot. The following year he made his first trip overseas, a three-month tour with his mother and Aunt Frank, who took him to England, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, and Morocco. He attended CMA until 1900, at times as a boarder, but it seems he did not graduate. University In 1901, at 15 years old, Pound was admitted to the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Years later he said his aim was to avoid drill at the military academy. His one distinction in first year was in geometry, but otherwise his grades were mostly poor, including in Latin, his major; he achieved a B in English composition and a pass in English literature. In his second year he switched from the degree course to "non-degree special student status", he said "to avoid irrelevant subjects". He was not elected to a fraternity at Penn, but it seemed not to bother him.His parents and Aunt Frank took him on another three-month European tour in 1902, and the following year he transferred to Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, possibly because of his grades. Again he was not invited to join a fraternity, but this time he had hoped to do so, according to letters home, because he wanted to live in a fraternity house, and by April 1904 he regarded the move as a mistake. Signed up for the Latin–Scientific course, he appears to have avoided some classes; his transcript is short of credits. He studied the Provençal dialect and read Dante and Anglo-Saxon poetry, including Beowulf and the 8th-century Old English poem The Seafarer.After graduating from Hamilton in 1905 with.... Discover the Ezra Pound popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Ezra Pound books.

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  • Ezra Pound synopsis, comments

    Ezra Pound

    T. S. Eliot

    With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world. Who are w...

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    Ezra Pound

    Eric Homberger

    This set comprises 40 volumes covering nineteenth and twentieth century European and American authors. These volumes will be available as a complete set, mini boxed sets (by theme)...

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    Ezra Pound

    Ezra Pound

    «Ezra Pound. Primeros poemas (19081920)» recoge la traducción al castellano y la anotación crítica de una amplia selección de los poemas que Pound publicó desde principios del sigl...

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    Ezra Pound

    Stefan Loyen

    Das Buch beschäftigt sich mit dem amerikanischen Dichter Ezra Pound, einem der wichtigsten Vertreter der literarischen Moderne. Seine epochalen Theorien des Imagismus und Vortizism...

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    Ezra Pound

    Betsy Erkkila

    No one better symbolizes the course of modern literature ­ its triumphs and defeats ­ than Pound. From the dreaminess and aestheticism of his early poems, to his Imagist and Vortic...

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    Ezra Pound

    Robert Wernick

    Ezra Pound, the expatriate American poet, returned home in ignominy, and the postwar world watched as a literary giant was charged with treason. Here, in this shortform book by awa...

  • Memoirs synopsis, comments

    Memoirs

    Robert Lowell, Steven Gould Axelrod & Grzegorz Kosc

    A complete collection of Robert Lowell’s autobiographical prose, from unpublished writings about his youth to reflections on the triumphs and confusions of his adult life.Robert Lo...

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    The Paris Wife

    Paula McLain

    NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER  A deeply evocative novel of ambition and betrayal that captures the love affair between two unforgettable people, Ernest Hemingway and his wife Hadl...

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    Ezra Pound

    Stefan Loyen & Jürgen Klein

    Das Buch beschäftigt sich mit dem amerikanischen Dichter Ezra Pound, einem der wichtigsten Vertreter der literarischen Moderne. Seine epochalen Theorien des ‘Imagismus’ und ‘Vortiz...

  • The Wilds of Poetry synopsis, comments

    The Wilds of Poetry

    David Hinton

    An exploration of the emerging Western consciousness of how deeply we belong to the wild Cosmos, as seen through the lineage of modern America's great avantgarde poets a thril...

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    Ezra Pound

    Alec Marsh

    Genius, Confucian, fascist, traitor, peace activistEzra Poundlove him or hate him, he is impossible to ignore as one of the most influential modernists and controversial poets of t...

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    Ezra Pound

    John Tytell

    Unlike other biographical portraits of Ezra Pound, John Tytell’s brilliant and ambitious work offers an interpretive study that boldly confronts the emotional truths and psychologi...

  • The Paris Review Interviews, IV synopsis, comments

    The Paris Review Interviews, IV

    The Paris Review

    For more than fifty years, The Paris Review has brought us revelatory and revealing interviews with the literary lights of our age. This critically acclaimed series continues with ...

  • Selected Poems of Ezra Pound synopsis, comments

    Selected Poems of Ezra Pound

    Ezra Pound

    Ezra Pound has been called "the inventor of modern poetry in English." The verse and criticism which he produced during the early years of the twentieth century very largely determ...

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    Ezra Pound

    Massimo Bacigalupo

    Ezra Pound scrisse che un poeta deve saperci dare il suo mondo. Per circa sessant’anni (19081968) egli non cessò di creare il suo mondo poetico, inviandoci ragguagli di esperienze ...

  • A Moveable Feast synopsis, comments

    A Moveable Feast

    Ernest Hemingway

    Ernest Hemingway’s classic memoir of Paris in the 1920s, now available in a restored edition, includes the original manuscript along with insightful recollections and unfinished sk...

  • Delphi Poetical Works of Ezra Pound synopsis, comments

    Delphi Poetical Works of Ezra Pound

    Ezra Pound

    American poet and critic, Ezra Pound was a major figure of the modernist movement, whose poetry collections and development of Imagism advocated clarity, precision and economy of l...

  • The Poetry of Ezra Pound synopsis, comments

    The Poetry of Ezra Pound

    Ezra Pound

    In his poetry Ezra Pound shares his strong yet subtly lyrical poems including the more epic Three Portraits and Four Cantos. The style is often that of modernism devoid of symbolis...

  • More Miracle Than Bird synopsis, comments

    More Miracle Than Bird

    Alice Miller

    “Marvelous.” Paula McLainA New York Times Book Review Summer Reading SelectionOn the eve of World War I, twentyoneyearold Georgie HydeLees meets the acclaimed poet W. B. Yeats...

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    Lost in Paris

    Elizabeth Thompson

    “A luscious, layered story of inheritance, heartbreak, reinvention, and family. I adored this book.” Kristan Higgins, New York Times bestselling authorWhen a deed to an apartment i...

  • The Poetic Achievement of Ezra Pound synopsis, comments

    The Poetic Achievement of Ezra Pound

    Michael Alexander

    This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voi...

  • A Moveable Feast synopsis, comments

    A Moveable Feast

    Ernest Hemingway

    Published for the first time as Ernest Hemingway intended, one of the great writer's most enduring works: his classic memoir of Paris in the 1920s Published posthumously in 1964, ...

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    Ezra Pound

    Antonio Ferraiuolo

    Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (Hailey, 30 ottobre 1885 – Venezia, 1º novembre 1972) è stato un poeta, saggista e traduttore statunitense, che trascorse la maggior parte della sua vita i...

  • Insel synopsis, comments

    Insel

    Mina Loy, Elizabeth Arnold & Sarah Hayden

    “He has an evening suit, but never an occasion to wear it, so he puts it on when he paints his pictures.”Insel, the only novel by the surrealist master Mina Loy, is a book like no ...

  • New Approaches to Ezra Pound synopsis, comments

    New Approaches to Ezra Pound

    Eva Hesse

    Great advances are currently being made in the understanding of Pound's lifework. Many of the essays in this bookthe majority are published her for the first timedisclose hitherto ...

  • Modernism and Homer synopsis, comments

    Modernism and Homer

    Leah Culligan Flack

    This comparative study crosses multiple cultures, traditions, genres, and languages in order to explore the particular importance of Homer in the emergence, development, and promot...

  • The Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy synopsis, comments

    The Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy

    John Brehm

    Over 125 poetic companions, from Basho to Billy Collins, Saigyo to Shakespeare.The Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy received the Spirituality & Practice Book A...