Ezra Pound

Born in Hailey, Idaho, on October 30, 1885, and raised partly in Pennsylvania, Ezra Pound became one of the driving forces behind modernist poetry. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania and Hamilton College, then moved to Europe, where he built a reputation as a poet, editor, and energetic supporter of new writing.

Pound played a major role in movements such as Imagism and Vorticism, and he is closely linked with some of the most important writers of his time. He helped promote and edit the work of figures including T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, and H.D., while also producing influential books of his own, especially the long-running poem cycle The Cantos.

His legacy is complicated by his outspoken support for Italian Fascism and antisemitic wartime broadcasts made from Italy during World War II. After the war, he was arrested and later confined for years at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C. Pound died in Venice on November 1, 1972, but he remains one of the most discussed and influential poets of the 20th century.