Morgan Spurlock
American filmmaker, screenwriter, and producer (1970-2024)
Ezra Pound was an influential American poet and critic who played a major role in the early modernist poetry movement. Despite his literary accomplishments, Pound’s life and legacy remain controversial due to his support for fascism and antisemitism during World War II.
Table of Contents
About the Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Poundwas an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a collaborator in Fascist Italy and the Salo Republic during World War II. His works include Ripostes (1912), Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920), and his 800-page epic poem The Cantos (c. 1917-1962).
Pound’s contribution to poetry began in the early 20th century with his role in developing Imagism, a movement stressing precision and economy of language. Working in London as foreign editor of several American literary magazines, he helped discover and shape the work of contemporaries such as Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, and James Joyce. He was responsible for the 1914 serialization of Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the 1915 publication of Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, and the serialization from 1918 of Joyce’s Ulysses. Hemingway wrote in 1932 that, for poets born in the late 19th or early 20th century, not to be influenced by Pound would be “like passing through a great blizzard and not feeling its cold”.
Angered by the carnage of World War I, Pound blamed the war on finance capitalism, which he called “usury”. He moved to Italy in 1924 and through the 1930s and 1940s promoted an economic theory known as social credit, wrote for publications owned by the British fascist Sir Oswald Mosley, embraced Benito Mussolini’s fascism, and expressed support for Adolf Hitler. During World War II, Pound recorded hundreds of paid radio propaganda broadcasts for the fascist Italian government and its later incarnation as a German puppet state, in which he attacked the United States federal government, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Great Britain, international finance, munitions makers, arms dealers, Jews, and others, as abettors and prolongers of the war. He also praised both eugenics and the Holocaust in Italy, while urging American GIs to throw down their rifles and surrender. In 1945, Pound was captured by the Italian Resistance and handed over to the U.S. Army’s Counterintelligence Corps, who held him pending extradition and prosecution based on an indictment for treason. He spent months in a U.S. military detention camp near Pisa, including three weeks in an outdoor steel cage. Ruled mentally unfit to stand trial, Pound was incarcerated for over 12 years at St. Elizabeths psychiatric hospital in Washington, D.C., whose doctors viewed Pound as a narcissist and a psychopath, but otherwise completely sane.
While in custody in Italy, Pound began work on sections of The Cantos, which were published as The Pisan Cantos (1948), for which he was awarded the Bollingen Prize for Poetry in 1949 by the Library of Congress, causing enormous controversy. After a campaign by his fellow writers, he was released from St. Elizabeth’s in 1958 and returned to Italy, where he posed for the press giving the Fascist salute and called America “an insane asylum”. Pound remained in Italy until his death in 1972. His economic and political views have ensured that his life and literary legacy remain highly controversial.
Frequently Asked Questions
Ezra Pound was an expatriate American poet and critic who was a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement. He collaborated with Fascist Italy and the Salò Republic during World War II.
Ezra Pound’s notable works include the poetry collections Ripostes (1912), Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920), and his epic poem The Cantos (c. 1917–1962).
Ezra Pound played a key role in developing Imagism, a poetic movement that stressed precision and economy of language. He helped discover and shape the work of influential poets like Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot, and Ernest Hemingway.
Angered by World War I, Ezra Pound blamed the war on finance capitalism and embraced fascism. During WWII, he recorded radio propaganda broadcasts for the fascist Italian government, leading to his arrest and incarceration for over 12 years.
Ezra Pound’s controversial political views, including his support for fascism and antisemitism, have ensured that his life and literary legacy remain highly controversial to this day.
In 1949, Ezra Pound was awarded the Bollingen Prize for Poetry by the Library of Congress for his work The Pisan Cantos, written while he was in custody, which caused enormous controversy due to his fascist views.
After being captured by the Italian Resistance in 1945, Ezra Pound was held by the U.S. Army’s Counterintelligence Corps and declared mentally unfit to stand trial. He was then incarcerated for over 12 years at a psychiatric hospital in Washington, D.C.
52 Quotes by Ezra Pound
- 1.
A general loathing of a gang or sect usually has some sound basis in instinct.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 2.
No verse is libre for the man who wants to do a good job.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 3.
Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one’s hand.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 4.
Music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance… poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 5.
Colloquial poetry is to the real art as the barber’s wax dummy is to sculpture.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 6.
The image is more than an idea. It is a vortex or cluster of fused ideas and is endowed with energy.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 7.
Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 8.
No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 9.
The act of bell ringing is symbolic of all proselytizing religions. It implies the pointless interference with the quiet of other people.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 10.
It ought to be illegal for an artist to marry. If the artist must marry let him find someone more interested in art, or his art, or the artist part of him, than in him. After which let them take tea together three times a week.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 11.
Either move or be moved.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 12.
But the one thing you should. not do is to suppose that when something is wrong with the arts, it is wrong with the arts ONLY.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 13.
When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 14.
I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 15.
A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 16.
If the individual, or heretic, gets hold of some essential truth, or sees some error in the system being practiced, he commits so many marginal errors himself that he is worn out before he can establish his point.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 17.
The real trouble with war (modern war) is that it gives no one a chance to kill the right people.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 18.
In our time, the curse is monetary illiteracy, just as inability to read plain print was the curse of earlier centuries.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 19.
A civilized man is one who will give a serious answer to a serious question. Civilization itself is a certain sane balance of values.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 20.
Humanity is the rich effluvium, it is the waste and the manure and the soil, and from it grows the tree of the arts.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 21.
A man of genius has a right to any mode of expression.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 22.
Literature is news that stays news.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 23.
Religion, oh, just another of those numerous failures resulting from an attempt to popularize art.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 24.
A great age of literature is perhaps always a great age of translations.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 25.
Any general statement is like a check drawn on a bank. Its value depends on what is there to meet it.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 26.
If a nation’s literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 27.
All great art is born of the metropolis.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 28.
Men do not understand books until they have a certain amount of life, or at any rate no man understands a deep book, until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 29.
Good art however “immoral” is wholly a thing of virtue. Good art can NOT be immoral. By good art I mean art that bears true witness, I mean the art that is most precise.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 30.
Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 31.
Gloom and solemnity are entirely out of place in even the most rigorous study of an art originally intended to make glad the heart of man.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 32.
The art of letters will come to an end before A.D. 2000. I shall survive as a curiosity.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 33.
Genius… is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 34.
The jargon of sculptors is beyond me. I do not know precisely why I admire a green granite female, apparently pregnant monster with one eye going around a square corner.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 35.
I guess the definition of a lunatic is a man surrounded by them.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 36.
Wars are made to make debt.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 37.
Literature does not exist in a vacuum. Writers as such have a definite social function exactly proportional to their ability as writers. This is their main use.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 38.
I could I trust starve like a gentleman. It’s listed as part of the poetic training, you know.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 39.
Somebody said that I am the last American living the tragedy of Europe.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 40.
People find ideas a bore because they do not distinguish between live ones and stuffed ones on a shelf.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 41.
I have never known anyone worth a damn who wasn’t irascible.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 42.
The modern artist must live by craft and violence. His gods are violent gods. Those artists, so called, whose work does not show this strife, are uninteresting.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 43.
I have always thought the suicide should bump off at least one swine before taking off for parts unknown.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 44.
The worst mistake I made was that stupid, suburban prejudice of anti-Semitism.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 45.
Nothing written for pay is worth printing. Only what has been written against the market.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 46.
Allow me to say that I would long since have committed suicide had desisting made me a professor of Latin.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 47.
Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 48.
If a patron buys from an artist who needs money, the patron then makes himself equal to the artist; he is building art into the world; he creates.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 49.
When you cannot make up your mind which of two evenly balanced courses of action you should take – choose the bolder.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 50.
If I could believe the Quakers banned music because church music is so damn bad, I should view them with approval.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 51.
Technique is the test of sincerity. If a thing isn’t worth getting the technique to say, it is of inferior value.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)
- 52.
And New York is the most beautiful city in the world? It is not far from it. No urban night is like the night there… Squares after squares of flame, set up and cut into the aether. Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will.
Ezra PoundAmerican poet and critic (1885-1972)