On the 24th of August in 1966, an curious old man wrote the last bit of his greatest work, one that had been taking shape all throughout his life. It reads:

"That her acts, Olgas acts, of courage be remembered.

Her name was Courage, & is written Olga

These lines are for the ultimate CANTO

Whatever I may write in the interim" (Pound, 824)

Pound wrote 116 complete Cantos, and fragments of several others, including this one. Olga Rudge was the love of his life, and of much inspiration (at least early on) to the bearded one. Not long after this was written, Ezra all but disappeared into obscurity, spending the last several years of his life in his beloved Italy. In 1972, he left. Who was this strange aged fellow? What lead up to this quiet ending that changed modern literature forever? Soon you shall know, as you explore the life and works of one Ezra Pound.

It begins in Hailey, Idaho, where Ezra Loomis Pound makes his grand entrance in 1885. He was born into a well off family (his father worked at the US Mint) and when Ezra was 18 months old they moved to Philadelphia (MaGill, 1688), the mint headquarters of sorts. Ezra had no inspiration from being poor or deprived, because he never was. However, his mother had high expectations for her son and pushed for him to go to college when only 4% of people of college age did; the number is now 40% (Kenner, 263). At age 12, Pound went to Chettenham Military Academy, perhaps inspiring his sense of order and calculation seen through his works. Pound never got too orderly, normal or boring, though.

Ezra began college at the University of Pennsylvania and later went to Hamilton College, where he got his bachelors degree. Pound "received a Ph.B [from Hamilton] - a degree the school invented for him (and never offered before or since) to fit the assortment of courses he insisted on taking." (HistoryChannel.com) There seems to be some query on what exactly Ezra does next; one account says that he was "[forced by money problems in 1907] to take a job at Wabash College, IN, but after four months he was fired for being a Latin Quarter type."(HistoryChannel.com) Another slightly different version says he taught Romance languages at Wabash College around 1907 as well, but also says he was fired after a scandal involving a "young, stranded actress" staying overnight in his bedroom (Poetry for Students, 116). It was after this silly scandal that Ezra had apparently had enough with America, and promptly went to Europe, his home for most of the rest of his life.

Ezra had been taken to Europe with his parents as a boy, them being well off, and he must have gotten rather fond of it. The first stop for Pound in Europe was England, where he soon managed to privately publish his first volume of poetry, "A Lume Spento" in 1908 (Poetry for Students, 116). These first works, though they may not be his most critically acclaimed of Pounds penmanship, are some of his better ink, in my opinion. Later on, he had more to worry about, and was much more deep in thought and mind. Now he was young and rambunctious, and his writing more simple, beautiful, less painful and difficult to absorb the meaning, without detracting from the quality always apparent throughout all he wrote in his life. Yes, Pound had truly arrived when in London in 1911 he made one of the first of his many wonderful impacts on how modern literature is and was. He did like many young writers did at the time, only better: he not only joined a movement, he helped start it.

The Imagists were co-founded by Pound and some of his new friends in England, including Hilda Dolittle (aka HD), and William Carlos Williams. All of them wrote fascinating poems and their styles vary greatly and wonderfully. Imagists sought, above all, to "make it new." The base theory of Imagism, inspired by their recent contemporaries the Symbolist movement and Asian principles & poetry such as Haiku, consisted of this:

"1. Direct treatment of the thing itself

2. Use [of] no word that is not relevant to the presentation

3. ...use [of] rhythm in the sequence of musical phrase, not the metronome" (Poetry for Students, 115)

Even though all the Imagists wrote beautiful, vivid poems based on these three principles seen above, none so encapsulated the entire movement as Ezras own "In a Station of the Metro." He described it as a "[haiku]-like sentence" which is the "poetic ideal for the theory of Imagism" (Poetry for Students, 115). The title of this quick verse is "almost better seen as a line of the poem itself:" (Poetry for Students, 115)

"The apparition of these faces through the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough"

It simply boggles the mind that so much can be drawn from these 14 simple words, played out perfectly like a play for which someone has been rehearsing for years, strewn across a paper like the masterpiece of an artist, which many believe it to be. Page upon page have been written about this brief ode, its allusions to life and death and many things. As for me, I find it petty; nice, thought provoking, but no masterpiece. Plus I believe that whatever you, or anyone else, sees in this, or any, work of art, visual or written, is always going to be subjective. The ability of the artist to get these emotions from you must be there however, and I will not doubt Pounds ability in this area. With all this said, however, further reading of Pound finds much more interesting and well put together words.

It was also about this time that Ezra began drafting his true masterpiece, or should I say masterpieces, the Cantos mentioned earlier. The first Cantos to ever appear in print were in Poetry Magazine; to be specific, the June, July, and August issues of 1917. A very limited (90 copies) printing of A Draft of XVI Cantos was produced in 1925 (Nassar, 11). For some reason these are the more heavily criticized of Pounds Cantos, but, anyway, more on the Cantos later, after more of them are written. At this point, Ezra was still in search of his identity, in search of his place in the world.

Pound was in the prime of his youth. He was working hard to establish himself in London as a poet and an artist, noted for a "flamboyant personality" and wore in public absurdities such as "earrings, flowing capes, and a dramatic red beard."(MaGill, 1690) Perhaps he just wanted to draw attention to his art, for any artist has to sell to live, simply put. In my opinion, he perhaps was masking social insecurities caused by his easy going childhood not preparing him for all that he was going to live through. Not preparing him for the real world.

As W.W.I was ravaging Europe, Pound sat tight, absorbing it all, ready to unleash it all on the world, with a harsh, new philosophy and a furious magazine to match it.

"BLAST!" was its name. Wyndham Lewis was its editor; Pound himself was one of the major contributing editors. It was a fiery concoction of anti-war, anti-establishment, anti-society, anti-everything (it seemed) literature and art; intelligent rants about the stupidity of people in general and the problems with society and industry and corporate power and the lot. One can complain forever about these things, but Pound and company made it much more interesting and wickedly fun than anything I could probably write. The cover of the first issue features a strange, nearly abstract painting by one of their friends depicting a purple, nondescript mass of industrialized clones laboring in what appears to be a munitions factory of some kind, as if for communists. It seems absurd, but Absurd is Ezras other middle name. His rants, calling for revolutions of every kind, are actually quite convincing and empowering. Vorticism is a very exciting thing, at first at least. As a biographer puts it, (rather well I think) "He launched polemic [controversial] missiles; massive, compact..." and goes on to quote Pound on his Vorticist principles:

"Our Vortex is fed up with your dispersals, reasonable chicken-men.

Our Vortex is proud of its polished sides.

Our Vortex will not hear of anything but its disastrous polished dance.

Our Vortex desires the immobile rhythm of its swiftness.

Our Vortex rushes out like an angry dog at your Impressionist fuss.

Our Vortex is white and abstract with its red-hot swiftness." (Kenner, 241)

World War I had devastated Europe, and this is the best possible human reaction (in my opinion) to devastation - not retaliation, but simply reverberation, a literal blast of anguish and despair, safely falling upon shocked ears, to the giddy delight of its creators. Ezras descent into Vorticism from the Imagist theories proved to be quite a major crossroads in his life, on which the turn he chose wasnt necessarily for the best.

One could say several things about said spiraling descent into Vorticism. One could say that it was one of Pounds greater strides as an artist. One could also say that its impact on his life was profoundly negative.

One of Pounds greatest influences was always Ancient Rome and Greece, so he makes his way to and settles down in Italy. Mistraught by war and his own violent philosophy perhaps, the fascist uprising in Europe must have seemed like just the door Pound was seeking, the door to self fulfillment. He became good friends with Benito Mussolini, notorious dictator of Italy during W.W.II and adversary of the "free world" America sought (and still seeks) to preserve and further create. Pound wrote in defense of his friend "Muss," as he even appears in a Canto.

When "Muss" lost the war, however, our friend was out of luck. Arrested for treason at the end of the war, Pound had been broadcasting fascist propaganda in Italy and the US from 1940-43 (Smithsonian). He was found unable to stand trial due to mental instability. Bizarrely, he is shipped off to St. Elizabeths Hospital for the Criminally Insane (Harpers) where he spends 13 years, eventually being freed by a very persuasive literary community. By this time, Pound is the old man he was earlier. His Cantos drift off into endless space and obscurity, rambling about ancient Chinese and Japanese history and the great individuals who lived then. The critics, however, eat it all up. They go on and on about all the subtle allusions to modern day society and people and friends of Pound that he wove into there. It seems like too much work to me to decipher all of that nonsense and for what? The satisfaction of knowing what it means? Id rather just go on and read it for the face value... but these Cantos are full of Asian writing and names... all the names! Names and events and chronology... the dullest of verse.

At least the last fragments of the Cantos are somewhat interesting, reflecting upon quite an interesting life, just as I am now. The beginning and the end are usually the best parts of a book; everything else is filler. As a final analysis of the Cantos of Ezra Pound, E.P. Nassar writes:

"...The poets soul has the power within that can carry him temporarily out of erebrus [or "the infernal regions"] into that blessed paradise terrestre of the mind, to that place that the lyric mode of Pounds Cantos has always represented." (Nassar, 142)

The latter part of Ezras life was quiet, as described at the beginning of our journey. Beginnings are really endings, and endings are really beginnings. So says the law of the vortex.

WORKS CITED

History Channel Online, The. 2003, History Channel. 3 February 2003. http://www.historychannel.com

Kenner, Hugh. The Pound Era. Berkley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1971

Magill, Frank N. Magills Survey of American Literature Volume 5. New York: Marshall Cavendish Corporation, 1991.

Nassar, Eugene Paul. The Cantos of Ezra Pound: The Lyric Mode. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1975

"New Books (Reviews)("Her name was Courage and is written Olga")." Harpers Magazine, January 2002:

p. 63(1). 4 February 2003.

http://www.ncwiseowl.org/generalreferencecenter-

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Poetry for Students: Volume 2. Detroit: Gale Research, 1998

Pound, Ezra. The Cantos of Ezra Pound. New York: New Directions Publishing (1993), c1970

"Strange and Inscrutable Case of Ezra Pound, The." Smithsonian December 1995: p112(16). 4 February 2003. http://www.ncwiseowl.org/general-

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