Ezra Pound

The highly influential modernist poet and literary gadfly Ezra Pound had a great sense of humor when he wasn't off on an anti-Semitic rant. Pound lived a long life, from 1885 to 1972, most of it in Europe after losing his first teaching position in the U.S. due to scandalously inviting a young homeless woman to his room at Wabash College where he lectured on classical literature.

Pound is known for befriending and helping many great writers in their careers, including Joyce, Hemingway and T.S. Eliot, among others.

Pound is notoriously famous for his anti-Americanism, perhaps born of a great love for America. Born in Hailey, Idaho and raised in Philadelphia, he was a child prodigy, starting college at age 15 when he announced his intention to become a great poet.

Pound believed credit would ruin economics and destroy nations. He may have been a visionary in that regard as well as in poetics.

Considering how judgments of obscenity in the early twentieth century were based on the extent of the supposed obscene material's circulation, Pound substitutes Classics for Pornography in this satirical poem:

Cantico del Sole


The thought of what America would be like

If the Classics had a wide circulation

Troubles my sleep,

The thought of what America,

The thought of what America,

The thought of what America would be like

If the Classics had a wide circulation

Troubles my sleep.

Nunc dimittis, now lettest thou thy servant,

Now lettest thou thy servant

Depart in peace.

The thought of what America,

The thought of what America,

The thought of what America would be like

If the Classics had a wide circulation...

Oh well!

It troubles my sleep.

TS