EZRA POUND (1885–1972) has been called a poetic visionary, and “the inventor of modern English poetry.”
His lyric genius, superb technique, and profound insights ensured his reputation as one of the few men who throughout the centuries have kept poetry alive, ever growing and relevant.
In the early twentieth century, he was famous for the generosity with which he championed the work of such major contemporaries as Ernest Hemingway, William Carlos Williams, Robert Frost, Marianne Moore, T.S. Eliot, and James Joyce: he was singularly responsible for the publication in 1918 of Joyce’s Ulysses, and in 1915 of Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
The verse and critical essays he produced during these years largely determined the directions of creative writing in our time; virtually every major poet in England and America today has acknowledged his influence.
Hemingway wrote: “The best of Pound's writing – and it is in the Cantos – will last as long as there is any literature.”
The Cantos have been called the single most important epic poem of the twentieth century.
