Ezra Pound

1
Ezra Pound

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

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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.

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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.

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Poetry Awards

• 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

• 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.
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Anti-Semitic Views andBenito 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 demiseJewish bankers. His
  political and anti-Semitic views are responsible
  for his work not being published or awarded on
  several occasions.

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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/p
  ound.htm
• http//encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/RefArticle.
  aspx?refid761565104pn1s4s4
• http//www.poets.org