Ezra Pound

Geniusis the capacity to see ten things when the ordinary man sees one. -Pound

Family Background & Education

Born In Hailey, Idaho in 1885; died in Venice in 1972 Completed two years of college at the University of Pennsylvania Earned a degree from Hamilton college in 1905 Taught at Wabash College for two years Married Dorothy Shakespear in 1914 Pound was a recluse towards the end of his life, and at the beginning he was not close with any relatives. So, his family background isnt very detailed.

Contributions and Influences

Pound was influenced by his hero, W.B. Yeats. In the early 1900s, Pound moved to Venice and befriended Yeats. Pound influenced most of todays modern poets and such major poets as Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, H.D., James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, and T.S. Eliot. His contributions to poetry began with Imagism, which used classic Japanese and Chinese poetry and traditional meter and rhyme. Another huge contribution was his epic The Cantos.

Poetry
A Lume Spento (1908) Personae (1909) Exultations (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

Awards
1949 Library of Congress Award Due to his anti-Semitic beliefs, Pound was not awarded certain respect that he would have received if he had different political beliefs. Alba As cool as the pale wet leaves

of lily-of-the-valley
She lay beside me in the dawn.

Anti-Semitic Views and Benito Mussolini

World War I contributed to Pounds negative views on the West, which he called a botched civilization. He called America a half savage country. Pound saw Benito Mussolini, Italys fascist dictator, as a savior of the world from capitalism. In 1933, Pound met Mussolini and Mussolini praised Pounds works. In anticapitalist and anti-Semitic speeches, Pound ridiculed those he held responsible for the Wests decline and demise Jewish bankers. His political and anti-Semitic views are responsible for his work not being published or awarded on several occasions.

Works Cited
http://www.lit.kobe-u.ac.jp/~hishika/pound.htm http://www.brainyquote.com/ http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/pound/poun d.htm http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/RefArticle.aspx? refid=761565104&pn=1&s=4#s4 http://www.poets.org