Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an expatriate American poet and critic. He was a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement. His works include Ripostes, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, and his 800-page epic poem, The Cantos. Pound was arrested in 1945 by American forces in Italy on charges of treason. He died in Italy in 1972, but his political views have ensured that his life and work remain controversial.

About Ezra Pound in brief

Summary Ezra PoundEzra Weston Loomis Pound was an expatriate American poet and critic. He was a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement. His works include Ripostes, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, and his 800-page epic poem, The Cantos. Pound was arrested in 1945 by American forces in Italy on charges of treason. He spent months in a U. S. military camp in Pisa, including three weeks in an outdoor steel cage. Pound died in Italy in 1972, but his political views have ensured that his life and work remain controversial. He wrote for publications owned by the British fascist Sir Oswald Mosley. He embraced Benito Mussolini’s fascism, and expressed support for Adolf Hitler. He made hundreds of paid radio broadcasts for the Italian government, including in German-occupied Italy, attacking the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt and, above all, Jews. Pound blamed the carnage of World War I 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. While in custody in Italy, Pound began work on sections of The Canto that were published as The Pisan Cantos, for which he was awarded the Bollingen Prize for Poetry in 1949 by the Library of Congress. Pound’s first publication was on 7 November 1896 in the Jenkown Times-Chronicle, a limerick about William Jennings Bryan, who had just lost the presidential election.

In 1897, aged 12, he made his first trip overseas, aged three, to a Civil War-style tour and taught how he wore an American Civil War uniform. He died in 1972 in Italy and lived in Italy until his death in 1972. He is survived by his wife, Frances Amelia Wessells Freer, and two children, Ezra Weston Weston and Isabel Weston. The family moved to Jenkintown, Pennsylvania in 1893, and Ezra attended the Wyncote Public School and the Heathcock School. On his mother’s side, Pound was descended from William Wadsworth, a Puritan who emigrated to Boston on the Lion in 1632. The Wadsworths married into the Westons of New York; Harding Weston and Mary Parker were Pound’s maternal grandparents. 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 Loom is, married Thaddeus Coleman Pound. The family bought a six-bedroom house in 1893 at 166 Fernbrook Avenue, in dame’s dame, in Wyncotes, Pennsylvania. Known as \”RaRa\”, he attended WyncOTE Public School from September 1892 to September 1894. He also attended Cheltenham Military Academy, where he was transferred to the Public School for three months in 1897.