Biography:
1885    Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was born October 30 in Hailey, Idaho.
After eighteen months family moves to Pennsylvania.
1889 Family moves to Philadelphia, and they become members of the Calvary Presbyterian Church.
1898 They take a three months tour of Europe (London, Brussels Cologne, Pares The Alps, Venice, Granada, Tangiers, etc.) with his aunt, Frances “Frank” Wessels Weston.
1901-3 Pound studies at the University of Pennsylvania and meets Hilda Doolittle, William Carlos Williams.
1903-5 Studies at Hamilton College, Clinton, New York.
1906 Gets M.A at University of Pennsylvania.
1907  Instructor in Romance Languages at Wabash College, Crawfordsville, Indiana, a small Presbyterian school, 1907-8.
1908  Publishes his first collections of Poems A lume spento, Venice, July, and settles in London
1912  Finds Andreas Divus of Justinopolis' Latin translation of the Odyssey in Paris. Walking tour in southern France, June-July. Harriet Monroe, Chicago, asks Pound to contribute to a new magazine Poetry, August. Ripostes, London, October.
1913  "A Few Don'ts," March. Meets Henri Gaudier-Brzeska. Meets Mary Fenollosa, relict of Ernest Fenollosa.
1914  Marries Dorothy Shakespear, 20 April, at St Mary Abbots. Meets T. S. Eliot.. Sends 'Prufrock' to Poetry. Begins to work Fenollosa's translations into English poems. Spends the winter of 1914-15 with Yeats at Coleman's Hatch.
1915  "Imagism and England," February. "Provincia Deserta," March. Cathay, London, April.   "Near Perigord,"
1916 Gaudier-Brzeska, April. Lustra, London, September. Certain Noble Plays of Japan, Churchtown.
1922 Begins a lifelong relationship with violinist OlgaRudge and has a daughter with her.
1924 Goes to Rapallo in Italy. Becomes interested in economics and social theories.
1945 Is arrested for treson by the partisans and handed over to the US military authorities. Incarcerated at Pisa. Here wrote the “Pisan Cantos(1943).
------ Returned to America. He was declared insane and unfit for trial and committed to St Elizabeth Hospital, Washington DC.
1949 The award of the Bolliingen Prize for the “Pisan Cantos”.
1958 Robert Frost and others pressed for his release which was grated in 1958. He returned to Italy.
1972 Dies in Venice, November 1. He was aged 87.

The Cantos:
     The Cantos, which Pound began in 1915, is an epic poem in 120 sections. The 800 or so
Pages combine personal experiences and reminiscences with historical detail, politics and economics. Topics include the influence of organised religion (of which he disapproved) and the monopoly by western banks of credit and interest rates - with classical Greek mythology, the Italian Renaissance and Chinese history all appearing as recurrent but fragmented themes.
     By the end of 1923 he had formulated a rough outline for the work and finished the
Opening cantos. In 1925 A Draft of XVI Cantos was published by the Three Mountains Press in
Paris. Next came A Draft of Cantos XVII-XXVII published in 1928. In 1930 all the cantos so
far were brought together and published by the Hours Press, Paris, under the title A Draft of
XXX Cantos.
     During the next decade he completed Cantos LII-LXXI (which focused on Chinese
history) and started contributing anti-Semitic pieces to magazines. He had recently become a
supporter of Hitler and of the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. In 1933 he was granted an
audience with Mussolini and presented him with his digest of economic reforms and a draft of
his Cantos.
     The influence of Mussolini is particularly apparent in the Pisan Cantos (LXVIV-
LXXXIV), which were written while Pound was in the medical compound at Pisa. When this
Won the Bollingen Prize in 1949, the literary and political world was incensed.
     In 1946 when he was 60, he was transferred to Saint Elizabeth's Hospital for the
Criminally Insane in Washington, DC, where he continued to write. During his 12 years here he
produced some of his most personal and powerful work, including Rock Drill (LXXXV-ICV)
and Thrones (ICVI-CIX).
     A few more fragments of cantos appeared over the next decade. By 1962, all work on it
had been abandoned and it remained unfinished.

Bibliography:
Poetry
A Lume Spento (1908)
Personae (1909)
Exultations (1909)
Provenca (1910)
Canzoni (1911)
Lustra and Other Poems (1917)
Quia Pauper Amavi (1919)
Umbra: Collected Poems (1920)
Cantos I-XVI (1925)
Cantos XVII-XXVII (1928)
A Draft of XXX Cantos (1930)
A Draft of Cantos XXXI-XLI (1934)
Homage to Sextus Propertius (1934)
The Fifth Decade of Cantos (1937)
Cantos LII-LXXI (1940)
The Pisan Cantos (1948)
Patria Mia (1950)
The Cantos (1972)

Prose
Gaudier Brzeska (1916)
Pavannes and Divisions (1918)
Instigations (1920)
Indiscretions (1923)
Antheil and the Treatise on Harmony (1924)
Imaginary Letters (1930)
How To Read (1931)
Prolegomena: Volume I (1932)
ABC of Economics (1933)
Make It New (1934)
The ABC of Reading (1934)
Social Credit and Impact (1935)
Jefferson and/or Mussolini (1935)
Polite Essays (1936)
Digest of the Analects (1937)
Guide to Kulchur (1938)
What is Money For? (1939)
The Spirit of Romance (1953)
Literary Essays (1954)
Selected Prose: 1909-1965 (1973)

Work Cited:
Twentieth-century Poetry in English: Ezra Pound URL:
http://www.lit.kobe-u.ac.jp/~hishika/pound.htm
BBC online: BBC Education: Ezra Pound URL:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/centurions/pound/pounbiog.shtml
Poetry exhibits: Ezra Pound URL:
http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=162