Ezra+Pound

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 * Ezra Weston Loomis Pound ** (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an American-born poet who wrote in the early part of the 20th century. He is noted for his work in developing the poetic style of imagism, as well as vorticism. His best known works are //Cathay,// a creative translation of poems written by the historical Chinese poet Rihaku, and his work titled //The Cantos,// which consumed nearly fifty years of his life. Pound had close ties to fellow poet William Carlos Williams, as well as Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot, and others.

[[image:pound.jpg width="192" height="234" align="right" caption="Ezra Pound"]]Biography
Ezra pound was born October 30th, 1885 in Hailey, Idaho to Homer Loomis Pound and Isabel Weston. From 1889 Pound lived an average middle-class life with his family near Philadelphia, where his father was employed at the U.S. Mint. He attended the Cheltenham Military Academy for a short time but transfered to a public high school before graduating. While attending the University of Pennsylvania between 1901 and 1903, Pound met fellow poet and lifelong friend William Carlos Williams. It was at Hamilton College that Pound earned a Ph.B. before returning to the University of Pennsylvania to do graduate work. In 1906 Pound earned an M.A. but left school before earning a doctorate.

In 1907 Wabash Presbyterian College employed him as a professor of Romance languages. However, just a few months later in February 1908 Pound left his teaching job to travel to Europe. It was in June 1908 that he published his first book of poetry, //A lume spento//, in Venice, Italy.

Pound found success in England where between 1909 and1910 he published three books of his work. Despite his success abroad, Pound was unable to find popularity in his home country and did most of his work in Europe. In 1911 he was hired by Alfred R. Orage, the editor of the socialist weekly //New Age//, and it was in writing for this publication he was able to find regular income for the next nine years.

In 1914 Pound married Dorothy Shakespeare, and in that same year he began collaborating with James Joyce, seeing to the publication of some of Joyce's work. Similarly, he provided T.S. Eliot with a start to his literary career.

He voluntarily exiled himself in 1924 in the country of Italy. During this time fascist politics became important to him, this led to his arrest upon his return to the U.S. in 1945. Specifically, he was arrested for broadcasting Fascist propaganda during WWII by means of the radio. Although he was acquitted the following year he was said to be mentally ill and thus was admitted to a hospital in Washington D.C. Fortunately for Pound there were numerous writers who were willing to overlook his politics due to his poetic skill and achievement. Thus he not only was given the prize for the //Pisan Cantos// in 1948, but he was also eventually given his freedom in 1958. Pound passed away in Venice where he had settled in the year 1972. = = =Works=

Poetry
//A Lume Spento// (1908) //Exultations// (1909) //Personae// (1909) //Provenca// (1910) //Canzoni// (1911) //Lustra and Other Poems// (1917) //Quia Pauper Amavi// (1919) //Umbra: Collected Poems// (1920) //Cantos I-XVI// (1925) //Cantos XVII-XXVII// (1928) //A Draft of XXX Cantos// (1930) //A Draft of Cantos XXXI-XLI// (1934) //Homage to Sextus Propertius// (1934) //The Fifth Decade of Cantos// (1937) //Cantos LII-LXXI// (1940) //The Pisan Cantos// (1948) //Patria Mia// (1950) //The Cantos// (1972)

Anthology
//Cathay// (1915) //The Great Digest, and the Unwobbling Point// (1951) //The Translations of Ezra Pound// (1953) //The Classic Anthology Defined// (1954)

Cathay
Here we are, picking the first fern-shoots And saying; When shall we get back to Our country? Here we are because we have the Ken-nin for our foemen, We have no comfort because of these Mongols. We grub the soft fern-shoots, When anyone says "Return," the others are full of sorrow. Sorrowful minds, sorrow is strong, we are hungry and thirsty. Our defence is not yet made sure, no one can let his friend return. We grub the old fern-stalks. We say: Will we be let to go back in October? There is no ease in royal affairs, we have no comfort. Our sorrow is bitter, but we would not return to our country. What flower has come into blossom? Whose chariot? The General's. Horses, his horse's even, are tired. They were strong. We have no rest, three battles a month. By heaven, his horses are tired. The generals are on them, the soldiers are by them. The horses are well-trained, the generals have ivory arrows and quivers ornamented with fish-skin. The enemy is swift, we must be careful. When we set out, the willows were drooping with spring, We come back in the snow, We go slowly, we are hungry and thirsty, Our mind is full of sorrow, who will know of our grief?

By Bunno Reputedly 1100 B.C.

This poem is the first in the //Cathay// collection, and the one most blatantly connected to war. This poem is a good example of skillful use of metonymy, which, simply put, is the use of language which describes or calls to mind something else by association. This occurs in "The Song of the Bowmen of Shu" when fern plants are mentioned. In the beginning of the poem, the people pick "the soft fern-shoots" which metonymically tells us that it is springtime. As the poem goes on the fern shoots are being described as they age and whither, and through them we are able to discern the passage of time. This poem also seems to call to attention the disparity of comforts between the general and the soldiers; the general has horses to ride, where the men must go on foot. The generals also have beautifully ornamented weaponry, but the soldiers "are hungry and thirsty." The poem itself may be metonymic of World War I, which was contemporary with the publication of //Cathay//.

Prose
Pound's prose includes //ABC of Economics// (1933//), Antheil and the Treatise on Harmony// (1924)//, Digest of the Analects// (1937)//, Gaudier Brzeska// (1916)//, Guide to Kulchur// (1938)//, How To Read// (1931)//, Imaginary Letters// (1930)//, Indiscretions// (1923)//, Instigations// (1920)//, Jefferson and/or Mussolini// (1935)//, Literary Essays// (1954)//, Make It New// (1934)//, Pavannes and Divisions// (1918)//, Polite Essays// (1936)//, Prolegomena: Volume I// (1932)//, Selected Prose: 1909-1965// (1973)//, Social Credit and Impact// (1935)//, T////he ABC of Reading// (1934)//, The Spirit of Romance// (1953)//,// and //What is Money For?// (1939). = = =Literary and Artistic Influences to His Work=

In the European milieu, Ezra Pound found his niche with the visual artists of the Vorticism and Abstract movement, including Francis Picabia, whose Star Dancer is pictured at right, and Pablo Picasso, pictured below right. Pound is quoted as saying that Picabia "is the only man I have ever met who has a genius for handling abstract concepts Through Picabia, he associated with the beginnings of the Surrealism artistic movement pioneered by Man Ray and Andre Breton, and the inspiration for the Dadaist poetic movement, Tristan Tzara, though he called Picabia "the dynamic under Dada." The poet and playwright William Butler Yeats employed Pound in 1914 as a secretary, and Pound credits influential author Ford Madox Ford with forming his literary technique . In the give and take of artistic influence, Pound didn't shy from bestowing his own gifts. "In his efforts to develop new directions in the arts, Pound also promoted and supported such writers as James Joyce, T. S. Eliot and Robert Frost."

Yet to offer more than a fleeting glimpse into Ezra Pound’s literary influences, both to his work and what he exerted on the artists of his time, it is necessary to openly address the issue of his decades long support of the political ideal of Fascism and his history of anti-Semitic rhetoric. Along with his contemporaries F.T. Marinetti and Manlio Torquoato Dazzi, Pound openly supported Mussolini’s Fascist regime in the 1930s and 1940s, moving to Italy during that time. His Cantos 72 and 73 are attributed to this era and theme. The following verse attributed by David Barnes as condensing his doctrine into a handful of words: “Tu con Marinetti fai il paio/Ambi in eccesso amaste, lui l’awenire/E tu il passato (Cantos 426). Massimo Bacigalupo has translated these lines as: ‘You [Dazzi] and Marinetti are two of a pair/Both loving too much, he the future,/You the past’. This phrase articulates not only a crucial internal problem in Pound’s career and practice—the arch-modernist as also a slightly archaic figure, ‘make it new’ meaning searching through reams and reams of the past for the fresh phrase—but it also describes an obvious dilemma for Fascism. With its Janus-faced nationalism, Fascism trod a path between futuristic modernity and imperialistic nostalgia.”

Pound is also quoted as writing to author James Joyce and complaining that “there is too much future and only me and Muss (Mussolini)/ and half a dozen others to attend to it." He seemingly endorsed Fascist violence when he pens, “bombe, bombe, bombe per svegliare questi dormiglioni di ‘pensatori’ italiani”, translated as “bombs, bombs, bombs, to wake up these slumbering Italian ‘thinkers’.

While World War II was in full horror on the European mainland, Pound became known for his radio broadcasts and essays in which endorsed not only Fascism, but soon, Nazism and virulent anti-Semitism. “By 1941, [he] was advocating a complete repudiation of ‘angloisrael’ and what he calls the ‘infezione giudaica’ (‘Jewish Infection’, ‘Anglo-Israele’, Ezra Pound’s Poetry and Prose, Vol. VIII99). By October of that year Pound was writing articles for the Meridiano di Roma with the titles like ‘L’Ebreo, Patologia Incarnata’ (‘The Jew, Pathology Incarnated’), and arguing that Europe would not be properly united and ‘Roman’, ‘dal momento che si eliminera l’usura internazionale ed ebraica’ (‘Until the moment it frees itself from international, Jewish usury’) ‘Il Grano’, Ezra Pound’s Poetry and Prose Vol. VIII140).”

Accusations of treason based on his radio broadcasts and essays supporting Fascism and Nazism led to his arrest and extradition to the United States. He is quoted as saying prior to his trial, “If I ain’t worth more alive than dead, that’s that. If a man isn’t willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he’s no good.” Standing up for his opinions and an insanity plea earned him twelve and a half years incarceration in a federal mental institution. It did little to quiet him. “There’s an idea a float here that I have betrayed this country. If that damned fool idea is still in anybody’s head, I want to wipe it out…What I want to know is whether anybody heard my broadcasts and, if so, how they could have any earthly idea of what I was talking about.”

His creative flow over the radio was matched by his pen, and he wrote the //Pisan Cantos// while imprisoned, for which he was awarded the Bollingen Prize for Poetry. “Pound incorporated the prisoners’ language into his text, performing such amazing feats as moving from ‘saecurlorum Athenae/ glaux, glaukopis,/olivi/ that which gleams and then does not gleam’ to ‘everyone of them g.d.m.f. generals/ c.s. all of ‘em fascists’ in twelve lines (74:438-39). He invented a new textual space in Canto 74, where a black prisoner judging the generals to be fascists in a string of bleeped words is heard in Pound’s textual utopia of gods and goddesses, their monumentality reaffirmed with their Latin epithets and their attendant train of Greek script.”

Blasing points out that, “Pound’s anti-Semitism is absolutely indefensible, but his insistence as an American citizen on his constitutional right to free speech is defensible. Also, as Richard Sieburth puts it, the speeches are ‘morally unconscionable but technically not treasonable.’” Pound remained staunch to his belief in his right to free speech and opinions, to the point of impeding attempts by influential supporters such as author T.S. Eliot to free him, who is quoted as saying, “Pound does not want to accept freedom on any terms that are possible.”

Ezra Pound’s outspoken vocal and literary history as a Fascist and anti-Semitist haunted him for years, tainting the reception of his subsequent published works. His family still battles this image of him today, filing suit against Neo-Fascist group that espouses Pound as their leader. “The use of Pound's name by an openly fascist group has not sat well with the poet's descendents, who argue that the artist who promoted African-American music and translated Chinese poetry should not be reduced to a single, dark period of his life. ‘We, the family, do not believe that Pound was a fascist poet,’ says Siegfried de Rachewiltz, the writer's grandson. Pound's anti-Semitism was both a reflection of contemporary currents and misguided bigotry motivated by his conflation of Judaism and global finance. "The fact is that he punished himself for that," says de Rachewiltz. "He realized that it had botched his life work. And so the last 10 years of his life were spent in this self-imposed silence." = Political Involvement =

When discussing Pound and politics the issue that is most relevant is that of Pound's commitment to the ideology of fascism. He lived during a time period of much cultural and international turmoil. On January 30th, 1933, Pound met and had a brief talk with Benito Mussolini, and there is no doubt that this conversation had a profound effect on his politics as well as his poetry. When analyzing his cantos it is evident that when he was writing them, he was directly attuned to the happenings of the world and the themes that can be seen in his work are tied closely to those events and are specifically seen through a fascist lens. His "political announcements" were filled with fascist tones. One of these was the idea of an "external enemy", which leads to one major flaw of Pound's. One pronounced area in Pound's life was his opinion of the Jewish people. As a devoted follower of Mussolini and Hitler, it came with the territory. As a fascist, he naturally was looking for an "other". The fascist bandwagon needed an enemy to be a meaningful movement in any way. With these two influences Pound found an "other" in Jews. This is exceedingly evident in the late 1930s as the government ruled by Mussolini adopted many laws that were in existence solely on a racist premise aimed at and for the Jews. With this government involvement Pound was all the more encouraged to view Jewish people in an unkind light. He is said, at this point in his life, to have begun investing more and more time in educating himself in anti-Jewish ways. = Cultural Movements =

When we talk about Pound and the cultural influences he was connected to it is useful to look at what Pound himself had to say. One such example that Pound himself spoke extensively about was Imagism. Pound saw Imagism as a movement that wasn't so much about the writers of poetry as it was about those critiquing the poetry, it was about those who were digesting the poetry. In his opinion Imagism was an instrument of the reader to see the text through a lens that helped him get to the core of it. He saw this concept corresponding to the idea that the readers of poetry were consistently "behind" the author of the poetry in terms of correct interpretation and designated meaning. He believed the artist most have an intimate and thorough knowledge of his subject before he could appropriately represent it. In terms of the idea of Imagism he had a carefully orchestrated idea of what it meant. To Pound it wasn't an ambiguous picture, it was a finely-tuned idea. He saw symbolism as means to compose poor art. Symbolism to Pound was a poorly constructed and limited way to create art, and he saw a distinct difference between it and Imagism. He said at one point, " An // image //, in our sense, is real because we know it directly.". How better to make a masterpiece than to create something that one has a first-had knowledge of. If the artist has the ability to convey an image they know personally, what better gift can be given to the consumers of their art? Pound also spoke some about the effect Vorticism had on him as an artist, because he was committed to the ideology of Imagism he had certain interesting beliefs about when an artist should try to make art based off of their experiences. If the artist was incapable of doing so in a way that would accurately and precisely convey the essence and of the experience, than they simply should let it rest. He acknowledged that that may mean he must suppress creating art around some experiences he himself had had, because he was not in the correct field of art to correctly show the experience. Pound's word for Vorticism was "intense", he used this word while reinstating the idea that there is an art form for an experience, idea etc. that is capable of creating the best portrayal, the most intense and dignified interpretation. The word "Vorticism" itself came from the idea that that which the author is trying to poetry is a "vortex". Pound described it with hard-pressed of an image. =Readings=

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Ezra pound reading his work "With Usura."

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