Ezra Pound was born in the American Midwest and brought up in Philadelphia, where his father worked for the mint. He was educated at Pennsylvania University and at Hamilton College, New York.After teaching briefly, Pound came to Europe in 1908, settling in London, where his poetry collection, Personae (1909), was received with acclaim. He soon became a central figure in avant-garde circles and was one of the first to recognise and promote the poetry of the American poet Robert Frost, then living in England, and of D H Lawrence. He was also instrumental in persuading the celebrated Irish poet William Butler Yeats, with whom he worked, to adopt a new style of composition which brought Yeats a second lease of poetic life. During this time, Pound also worked tirelessly in the modernist cause, helping such key figures as T S Eliot and James Joyce to publish their early work.
In 1915, Pound had published his free translation of Chinese poetry, Cathay, which was well received. In the following years, he published further books of poetry, as well as a volume of criticism. Depressed by the post-war atmosphere in Britain, however, he left for Paris in 1920, after having had published the 2 works which are often considered his most fully achieved efforts: Homage to Sextus Propertius (1919) and Hugh Selwyn Mauberly (1920).
In Paris, Pound recognised the talent of the young American novelist Ernest Hemingway and at Eliot's invitation edited The Waste Land, cutting it drastically. He also acted as correspondent for the American literary magazine, The Dial. In 1924 he left Paris, moving to Rapallo, Italy, with Olga Rudge, the American violinist.
At Rapallo, Pound developed The Cantos, the enormously long, ambitious work he had begun in 1915. He had published A Draft of XXX Cantos in 1930, following it with further Canto publications in 1934, 1937 and 1940. Together with Rudge, he also arranged a series of concerts and seminars in Rapallo and played a key part in the rediscovery of the Italian composer Vivaldi. His prose works included Make It New (1934) and Guide to Kulchur (1938).
He also wrote eccentrically on monetary reform and had published the political text Jefferson and/or Mussolini (1935). Pound's political views had lurched sharply to the right since his arrival in Italy and he proclaimed his admiration for fascist politics and for the Italian dictator, whom he had met in 1933.
Between 1941 and 1943, Pound made hundreds of broadcasts from Rome to the United States on behalf of the Mussolini regime, many of an anti-Semitic nature, condemning the US war effort and praising the Fascist enterpise. In 1945, he was arrested by US forces and interned in a camp for army criminals, where he nevertheless managed to write the Pisan Canto, published in 1948 and regarded by many critics as one of his finest achievements. Back in the United States, he was declared unfit to face charges of treason and confined for 12 years in a hospital for the criminally insane. In 1949, he was awarded the Bollingen Prize for Poetry for his Pisan Cantos. Released in 1958, he returned to Italy, where he died in Venice in 1972.
