Ezra Pound

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (October 30 1885 – November 1 1972) was an American expatriate, poet, musician and critic who, along with T. S. Eliot, was a major figure of the modernist movement in early 20th century poetry. He was the driving force behind several modernist movements, notably Imagism and Vorticism. The critic Hugh Kenner said on meeting Pound: "I suddenly knew that I was in the presence of the center of modernism."

St. Elizabeths

After the war, Pound was brought back to the United States to face charges of treason. He was found unfit to face trial because of insanity and sent to St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C., where he remained for 12 years from 1946 to 1958, when he was released and sent back to Italy, where he died in 1972. Pound was conceited and flamboyant, to say the least, which in psychiatric terms became "grandiosity of ideas and beliefs". The insanity case against Pound is widely believed to be an example of state abuse, effectively imprisoning Pound without a trial. By contrast, E. Fuller Torrey believed that Mussolini's propagandist was coddled by Winfred Overholser, the superintendent of St. Elizabeths. Overholser admired Pound's poetry and allowed him to live in a private room at the hospital, where he wrote three books, received visits from literary celebrities and enjoyed conjugal relations with his wife and several mistresses. (Torrey exposed the relationship between Overholser and Pound in a 1981 Psychology Today and later, the book The Roots of Treason.) At St. Elizabeths, he was surrounded by poets and other admirers and continued working on The Cantos as well as translating the Confucian classics. Many of the poets and artists who frequently visited Pound would have been horrified to learn that another of his most frequent visitors was the then-chairman of the States' Rights Democratic Party, with whom Pound used to discuss strategy and tactics on how best to rally public support for the preservation of racial segregation in the American South. Pound was befriended there by Guy Davenport, and subsequently Davenport wrote his Harvard dissertation on Pound's poetry (published as Cities on Hills in 1983), a work that was highly influential in causing a re-assessment of Pound's poetry. Pound was finally released after a concerted campaign by many of his fellow poets and artists, particularly Robert Frost. He was still considered incurably insane but not dangerous to others.

Related Topics:
Treason - St. Elizabeths Hospital - E. Fuller Torrey - Confucian - States' Rights Democratic Party - Guy Davenport - Robert Frost

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