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Ezra Pound (1885 - 1972)
 

Ezra Pound was born in Idaho and raised in a suburb of Philadelphia. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania where he became the lifelong friend of William Carlos Williams. At age 23, in 1908, he moved to England where he met the most prominent writers of his day, inclluding W. B. Yeats, for whom he was secretary. He championed the careers of Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot (whose Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock he skillfully edited), and James Joyce. Pound lived in Paris from 1920 through 1924, where he was a friend of the writers Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway. Having moved to Italy, in 1930 he met the Italian dictator Mussolini with whose anti-Semitism he was sympathetic. During WW II he made a series of pro-fascistic and ant-Semetic radio broacasts that led to his eventual arrest for treason following the war. Adjudged mentally unfit to stand trial he was sentenced to St. Elizabeth's Hospital for the Criminally Insane where he remained until 1958. Following his release, he returned to Italy.

Pound was co-founder, with Richard Aldington, of a movement called imagism whos manifesto promised 1, direct treatment of the 'thing' whether subjective or objective; 2. to use no word that did not contribute to the presentation; 3. As regarding rhythm, to compose in the sequence of a musical phrase, not in the sequence of a metronome. Soon drifting to vorticism, he thereafter strove to depict dynamic energies rather than represent static images.

His largest and crowning achievement, though never finshed was his Cantos, that attepted a massive reappraisal of history.His first completely modern poem was Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920). He also wrote versions of Old English, Provencal, Chinese, ancient Egyptian, and other verse.

 

 

 

SESTINA:ALAFORTE

LOQUITOR: En Bertrans de Born. Dante Alighieri puts this man in hell for that he was a stirrer up of strife. Eccovoi! Judge ye! Have I dug him up again? The scene is at his castle, Alaforte. "papiols" is his jongleur. "The Leopard," the device of Richard Coeur de Lion.

Damn it all! all this our South stinks peace.
You whoreson dog, Papiols, come! Let's to music!
I have no life save when the swords clash.
But ah! when I see the standards gold, vair, purple, opposing
And the broad fields beneath them turn crimson,
Then howl I my heart nigh mad with rejoicing.

In hot summer have I great rejoicing
When the tempests kill the earth's foul peace,
And the lightnings from black heav'n flash crimson,
And the fierce thunders roar me their music
And the wind shriek through the clouds mad, opposing,
And through all the raven skies God's swords clash.

Hell grant soon we hear again the swords clash!
And the shrill neighs of destriers in battle rejoicing,
Spiked breast to spiked breast opposing!
Better one hour's stour than a years peace
With flat boards, bawds, wine and frail music!
Bah! there's no wine like the blood's crimson!

And I love to see the sun rise blood-crimson.
And I watch his spears through the dark clash
And it fills all my heart with rejoicing
And pries wide my mouth with fast music
When I see him so scorn and defy peace,
His lone might 'gainst all darkness opposing.

The man who fears war and squats opposing
My words for stour, hath no blood of crimson
But is fit only to rot in womanish peace
Far from where worth's won and the swords clash
For the death of such sluts I go rejoicing;
Yea, I fill all the air with my music.

Papiols, Papiols, to the music!
There's no sound like the swords swords opposing,
No cry like the battle's rejoicing
When our elbows and swords drip the crimson
And our charges 'gainst "The Leopard's" rush clash.
May God damn for ever all who cry "Peace!"

And let the music of the swords make them crimson!
Hell grant soon we hear again the swords the swords clash!
Hell blot black for alway the thought "Peace!" 

The Garden

en robe de parade.
              -SAMAIN

Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall
She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,
And she is dying piecemeal
           of a sort of emotional anemia.

And round about there is a rabble
Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the poor.
They shall inherit the earth.

In her is the end of breeding.
Her boredom is exquisite and excessive.
She would like someone to speak to her,
And is almost afraid that I
           will commit that indiscretion.