Ezra Pound biography

In 1912, Pound helped create a movement that he and others called "Imagism," which signaled a new literary direction for the poet. At the core of Imagism, was a push to set a more direct course with language, shedding the sentiment that had so wholly shaped Victorian and Romantic poetry.

Precision and economy were highly valued by Pound and the other proponents of the movement, which included F.S. Flint, William Carlos Williams,

Amy Lowell, Richard Aldington, and Hilda Doolittle. With its focus on the "thing" as the "thing," Imagism reflected the changes happening in other art forms, most notably painting and the Cubists.

Pound's maxims included, "Do not retell in mediocre verse what has already been done in good prose" and "Use no superfluous word, no adjective which does not reveal something." But Pound's connection to Imagism was short-lived. After just a few years, he stepped aside, frustrated when he couldn't secure total control of the movement from Lowell and the others.

Literature's Best Friend

Pound's influence extended in other directions. He had an incredible eye for talent and tirelessly promoted writers whose works he felt demanded attention. He introduced the world to up-and-coming poets like Robert Frost and D.H. Lawrence, and was T.S. Eliot's editor. In fact, it was Pound who edited Eliot's "The Waste Land," which many consider to be one of the greatest poems produced during the modernist era.

Over the years, Pound and Eliot would become great friends. Early in his career, when Eliot abandoned his graduate studies in philosophy at Oxford, it was Pound who wrote the young poet's parents to break the news to them.

Pound's lineup of friends also included the Irish novelist James Joyce, whom he helped introduce to publishers and find landing spots in magazines for several of the stories in "The Dubliners" and "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man." During Joyce's leanest years, Pound helped him with money and even, it is said, helped secure for him an old pair of shoes to wear.

The Cantos

Pound's own work continued to flourish as well. The years immediately following World War I saw the production of two of his most admired works, "Homage to Sextus Propertius" (1919) and the 18-part "Hugh Selwyn Mauberley" (1921), the latter of which tackled a wide range of subjects, from the artist and society to the horrors of mass production and World War I.

In late 1920, after 12 years in London, Pound left England for a new start in Paris. But his tolerance for French life, it seems, was limited. In 1924, tired of the Parisian scene, Pound moved again, this time settling in the Italian city of Rapallo, where he would remain for the next two decades. It was here that Pound's life changed significantly. In 1925, he had a daughter, Maria, with American violinist Olga Rudge, and the following year he had a son, Omar, with his wife, Dorothy.

Professionally, Pound had turned his full attention to "The Cantos," an ambitious long- form poem he had begun in 1915. A work he self described as his "poem including history," "The Cantos" revealed Pound's interest in economics and in the world's changing financial landscape in the wake of World War I.