Ezra and Dorothy Pound: Letters in Captivity, 1945-1946

by Ezra Pound, Dorothy Pound, Omar Shakespear Pound (Editor)

These fascinating letters capture the most traumatic experience of Ezra Pound's life, when he was incarcerated at the end of World War II and indicted for treason. Omar Pound and Robert Spoo have collected and edited the unpublished correspondence between the poet and his wife, combining it
with military and FBI documents, previously unknown photographs, and an extensive, insightful introduction, to create the definitive work on this period of Pound's life.
During his incarceration in a U.S. Army detention camp outside Pisa, Pound was allowed to write only to his wife, so these letters afford a unique look at a painful yet highly productive period, when Pound wrote his acclaimed Pisan Cantos and worked on his translations of Confucius. Readers
will discover many fresh insights into the sources and contexts of the Cantos and the circumstances of their composition. Here, too, are many moving passages testifying to Pound's partnership with Dorothy and her courageous efforts to help him; her experiences no less than his come to life in this
volume. But perhaps the most moving are the harsh conditions Pound found himself at one point, in the Pisan camp, he was confined for three weeks in an open air cage, until the sixty year old poet suffered a breakdown and was moved to a tent in the medical compound. The editors connect the
anxious lyricism of the Pisan Cantos to these dramatic experiences, as the poet alternated "between savage indignation and suave serenity." The book also covers Pound's return to the United States and his confinement in a federal mental institution there.
With more than 150 previously unpublished letters and documents, all authoritatively annotated, Ezra and Dorothy Letters in Captivity, 1945 1946 , offers a rare glimpse into the life and work of one of our century's greatest literary figures.

Genres: Poetry

448 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet, critic and intellectual who was a major figure of the Modernist movement in early-to-mid 20th century poetry.

Pound's The Cantos contains music and bears a title that could be translated as The Songs—although it never is. Pound's ear was tuned to the motz et sons of troubadour poetry where, as musicologist John Stevens has noted, "melody and poem existed in a state of the closest symbiosis, obeying the same laws and striving in their different media for the same sound-ideal - armonia."

In his essays, Pound wrote of rhythm as "the hardest quality of a man's style to counterfeit." He challenged young poets to train their ear with translation work to learn how the choice of words and the movement of the words combined. But having translated texts from 10 different languages into English, Pound found that translation did not always serve the poetry: "The grand bogies for young men who want really to learn strophe writing are Catullus and François Villon. I personally have been reduced to setting them to music as I cannot translate them." While he habitually wrote out verse rhythms as musical lines, Pound did not set his own poetry to music.

Reviews

[Mitch]

Written while in Pisan cage, and later, in various tents. Pound is falling apart here, so the grammar deteriorates a bit. Interesting, though, both biographically, and in relation to the Pisan Cantos. Sad.

[Deanna Bounds]

Elicited a strong emotional response from deep within that lingered long after reading. I read these letters over and over, allowing the experiences he shared to take root as I pondered the deeper, bigger picture meaning of them. I wanted to devour everything I could about Ezra Pound.