Pound, Ezra 1885–1972

Pound was a major American poet who lived most of his life outside the United States. He was, according to Babette Deutsh, "an alchemist of words, producing, out of the commonest substances, precious metals and life-giving elixirs." He called the Cantos a "history of the world" and it is because of those uneven and opaque poems, modulations of his own voice through time and space, that he is now recognized as a major force in the development of modern poetry. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 5-8, rev. ed.; obituary, Vols. 37-40.)

[The Cantos] makes greater demands on one's learning and perseverance than any other poem that has ever been written. The reader is expected, for example, to guess at the meaning of quotations and monologues in nine foreign languages: Greek, Latin, Italian, French, Old French, Provençal, Spanish, German, and Chinese (besides one name in Persian script and, in Canto 93, a...

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