Ezra the Enigma
Biography
British poet Clive Wilmer called Ezra Pound “personally responsible” for the 1910s’ revival of English poetry (Wilmer). Born in Hailey, Idaho on October 30, 1885, Pound was an American poet who contributed greatly to the modernist movement and the imagist movement. His modernist and imagist poetry focused on concrete, succinct language.
Pound spent most of his youth and acquired most of his education in Pennsylvania, attending the University of Pennsylvania. but traveled to both London in his twenties. In London, Pound established his career: he arrived in 1908, and soon published numerous collections of poetry and became an influential contributor in magazines like the socialist New Age and the Chicagoan Poetry. His most famous work, “In a Station of the Metro,” was written just a few years later in 1913. From 1912 to 1914, he also launched the Imagist movement, producing the first imagist manifesto.
However, the brutal advent of World War I (1914-1918) left Pound changed. Pound moved to Paris, and the impact was tangible in the work that he later produced. The Encyclopedia Brittanica explains, “Unsettled by the slaughter of World War I and the spirit of hopelessness he felt was pervading England . . . [Pound began] writing a new, adult poetry that spoke calmly of current concerns in common speech” (Stock). In Paris, Pound developed a relationship with the young Ernest Hemingway, wrote an opera (which Mina Loy attended), and collaborated with T.S. Eliot in the writing and editing of the latter’s famous poem “The Waste Land.”
After the Great Depression of the 1930s, Pound began to become more involved in economic history and politics. He became an anti-war advocate, making several hundred broadcasts airing his political stances, many of which were explicitly critical of the United States’ war effort. He was arrested in 1945 and tried for treason. Deemed insane, he spent 1946 to 1958 in Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington where he continued to write and drew many loyal visitors.
Following his incarceration, however, Pound returned to Venice and stopped writing. He died in Venice on November 1, 1972. Yet, his legacy is vast; Pound is widely considered the father of imagism and recognized for his work in both the imagist and modernist spheres.
Pound remains a divisive figure today. His brilliance as a poet, translator, and thinker are countered by his anti-America rhetoric and association with fascism, resulting in his imprisonment and fall from grace. Loy recalled that Pound “was like a child, and an old professor at the same time” and that he “was a sensitive man who didn’t think other people were sensitive.” Wilmer states that Pound is frequently misunderstood: “If Pound is obscure, it is largely because of his wide frame of reference; he was also an educator, who used poetry to introduce his readers to works and ideas he had discovered for himself. It is hardly his fault that his syllabus has never been adopted” (Wimer).
Mina Loy deeply admired Pound for his work. She wrote in her essay “Modern Poetry,” “[T]o speak of the modern movement is to speak of [Pound]; the masterly impresario of modern poets.” Yet, the frequency, nature, and depth of Pound’s interaction with Mina Loy remains ambiguous. Their interactions are few and inconsistent.
In his essay “Arid Clarity,” Peters notes that many historians have traditionally envisioned Pound and Loy’s relationship as a solely one-way one, wherein the eminent Pound was a mentor or role model to the relatively obscure Loy. However, a closer look at the evidence points to the contrary: Pound famously coined the term logopoiea–defined as “a dance of the intelligence among words and ideas and modification of ideas and characters”–to describe Loy’s writing. He also once wrote in a letter to Marianne Moore, “except you, Bill [Williams] and Mina Loy who can write anything of interest in verse?”
Finally, and most surprisingly, Peters notes the marked similarities in word choice and vocabulary between Pound’s Hugh Selwyn Mauberley and Loy’s work as hints that Pound truly admired–and perhaps at times even strove to emulate–Loy’s abstract, emotionless writing style.
