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Ezra Pound

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Ezra Pound (1885-1972) is one of the most influential, and most controversial poets of the twentieth-century. He is a major figure in 'modernist' literature - that is, experimental literature written during the first part of the twentieth century, renowned for his remarkable knowledge of poetic forms, his experiments in style, and his interest in world literatures. He is best known for the group he founded in 1913, which he named 'Imagism', and for his long poem, The Cantos, which he began around 1915 and left unfinished at his death in 1972. Pound was born in 1885 in Hailey, Idaho, and he grew up in Philadelphia. At the University of Pennsylvania and Hamilton College, he studied Romance literatures, and planned to write a doctoral dissertation on the seventeenth-century Spanish playwright, Lope de Vega. Instead, he moved to London in 1908, to sit at the feet of W.B. Yeats, he later said, whom he considered the greatest living poet. His early verse shows the influence of the Victorian poet Robert Browning, and the late pre-Raphaelite poet Algernon Charles Swinburne, as well as Yeats and the medieval poets he'd studied at university: the Provençal troubadours, François Villon,...
Read the essay: Ezra Pound by Rebecca Beasley

Please note. The work of Ezra Pound is still in copyright so we cannot include any of it here. Instead, you will find in this collection some ebooks by authors that inspired Pound, as described in the essay.

# Title Description Contributor
1 Late Victorian into Modern

In this TORCH Book at Lunchtime event, co-editors Laura Marcus (Oxford) and Kirsten Shepherd-...

Kirsten Shepherd-Barr, Laura Marcus
2 Modern Poetry - Imagism (lecture)

Lecture by Professor Langdon Hammer given as part of Open Yale courses, 'engl 310: Modern Poetry...

Langdon Hammer
3 Ezra Pound (lecture)

Lecture by Professor Langdon Hammer given as part of Open Yale courses, 'engl 310: Modern Poetry...

Langdon Hammer
4 Ezra Pound

Dr Rebecca Beasley explains why we should read Pound, someone she considers as the central...

Rebecca Beasley
# Title Description Contributor
1 Ezra Pound

Dr Rebecca Beasley explains why we should read Pound, someone she considers as the central...

Rebecca Beasley
# Essay Title Description Contributor
1 Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound (1885-1972) is one of the...

Rebecca Beasley
2 Modernism

Ezra Pound’s maxim, ‘Make it new’ (‘Canto LIII’) is often quoted as a succinct summary of...

Rebecca Beasley
# Title Description Author
1 The Collected Poems

ebook version of The Collected Poems

Yeats, W.B. (William Butler), 1865-1939
2 The Divine Comedy: Paradise

from The Divine Comedy: The Vision of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise / translated by Henry...

Dante Alighieri
3 The Divine Comedy: Purgatory

from The Divine Comedy: The Vision of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise / translated by Henry...

Dante Alighieri
4 The Divine Comedy: Hell

from The Divine Comedy: The Vision of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise / translated by Henry...

Dante Alighieri
5 Poems and ballads

London : John Camden Hotten

Algernon Charles Swinburne
6 The Ring and the Book Robert Browning
7 Dramatic Romances Robert Browning
8 Dramatic Lyrics Robert Browning
9 Paracelsus Robert Browning
# Resource Title Description Contributor
1 Ezra Pound Passport

United States passport issued to Ezra Pound. 31 cm x 22 cm. Stamped "Cancelled."

2 Letter from W B Yeats to Ezra Pound

Letter written from William Butler Yeats at Ballinamantan House, Co. Galway, Ireland, to Ezra...

3 Cathay title page

Title page from Ezra Pound, "Cathay", London, Elkin Mathews, 1915. Based on the translations of...

4 Ezra Pound 1945 'mug shot'

'Mug shot' taken by U.S. armed forces in Italy, May 26 1945