Born: October 30, 1885, in Hailey, Idaho, United States
Died: November 1, 1972, in Venice, Italy
Ezra Loomis Pound was an American poet and translator of the avante-garde movement. His contributions to criticism in the twentieth century are immeasurable.
At the age of fifteen, Ezra Loomis Pound was educated at the University of Pennsylvania and Hamilton College. After he graduated in 1905, he spent two years teaching romance languages at the University of Pennsylvania. He quickly established himself as a literary figure with the publication of Personae in 1909.
After traveling for a brief period, he moved to London where he became a foreign correspondent for two American magazines, Poetry and The Little Review. He is noted for his work with writers T. S. Eliot, William Butler Yeats, James Joyce, and so on. He is also credited for developing the literary theories of imagism.
In 1920, Pound moved to Paris. Here, he became prominently associated with American writers such as Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway. He worked as a journalist and translator while completing Hugh Selwyn Mauberly.
Excerpts from his most noted work, Cantos, were published in 1925. The complete work, however, was not published until 1970. This work attempts to interpret cultural history and Pound drew on all of his experiences in its creation.
He moved to Italy during World War II and was arrested for distributing fascist propaganda to the United States. Because he was declared psychologically unfit, he was imprisoned in a mental hospital in Washington, D.C.