Born: 30 October 1885 · Died: 1 November 1972 · Age: 87
American modernist poet of The Cantos who championed Eliot and Joyce but was charged with treason for wartime broadcasts
Did you know?He helped launch the careers of several literary giants, including T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Robert Frost.
Quick facts
Date of birth30 October 1885
Date of death1 November 1972
Age at death87
Cause of deathGastrointestinal system disease
NationalityAmerican
BirthplaceHailey, United States
Occupationpoet, literary critic, composer
Editor's Take:
Ezra Pound helped invent modern poetry and then destroyed his own reputation. Born in Idaho, he moved to London in 1908 and became a tireless promoter of new writing. He championed T. S. Eliot, James Joyce and Robert Frost, and heavily edited Eliot's The Waste Land. His motto was "Make it new". He spent decades on The Cantos, a vast and difficult poem. In Mussolini's Italy he made antisemitic radio broadcasts during the Second World War. Charged with treason, he was judged unfit to stand trial. He spent twelve years in a psychiatric hospital in Washington.
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a collaborator in Fascist Italy and the Salò Republic during World War II. His works include Ripostes (1912), Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920), and The Cantos (c.
