America’s Most Controversial and ALMOST 7th Poet Laureate

The man who was almost the 7th Poet Laureate of the United States was Ezra Pound. Mr. Pound is generally considered the poet most responsible for defining and promoting a modernist aesthetic in poetry. Ezra Pound was born in born in Hailey, Idaho, in 1885, but his influence was on the entire world of poetry in virtually every country of this earth.

All of my early struggling poetry loving life I have read about Mr. Pounds work with and generosity for, and his efforts to advanced the work of such major contemporaries as William Butler Yeats, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Marianne More, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, and perhaps most famous of all was his work with T. S Eliot. I recall reading that line by line of the famous Eliot poem The Wasteland, was worked over by Mr. Pound. Ezra Pounds own poetry was influenced by the poetic technique he found in classical Chinese and Japanese poetry.

Personally, I found Mr. Pound’s work to be over my head, esoteric, and intentionally difficult and obscure, nevertheless, I am no equal to the intellect of Ezra Pound, so my bewilderment over his work means very little.

Ezra Pound left the United State around 1924, and lived in various European countries. Eventually, during World War II Mr. Pound lived in Italy and became a supporter of the Fascist politics going on there. Some of Mr. Pound’s Fascist activities included radio broadcasts to the United States that were considered anti-American. When the US liberated Italy from the Fascism of Mussolini Ezra Pound was arrested by the army and held in a Pisa, Italy detention camp.

When the army shipped Mr. Pound back to the United States, in 1945, he was arrested and charged with treason. A trial was held, and there was some controversy over this matter because Ezra Pound was admired for his work and influence as a poet. Some feel that the reputation of Mr. Pound made it politically difficult to send him to prison for treason, so, in 1946, he was acquitted, but declared mentally ill and committed to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C.

I was living in the Washington DC area and a school friend had a father that worked at the Saint Elizabeth Hospital and had known Mr. Pound. So when it comes to that 6 Degrees of Separation, I am three people removed from knowing Ezra Pound, for what it’s worth.

Now we come to the Poet Laureate controversy. During his confinement to the mental hospital, the jury of the $1,000 Bollingen-Library of Congress Award (which (which included a number of the most eminent writers of the time) chose to overlook Pound's treasonous past, and to give him the Bollingen Prize for his work Pisan Cantos written in 1948. This means that most of these poems were written while Mr. Pound was sitting in a Pisa, Italy detention camp, or later in the nuthouse where he was forcibly hospitalized for mental incompetence.
Making a guy, in the nut factory the position of Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress created a huge public protest.

Congressman James T.Patterson, of Connecticut was quoted at the time of this controversy asking:

Should we encourage the activities in literature of moral lepers?

Under pressure, the Library of Congress withdrew their decision to make Mr. Pound America’s 7th Poet Laureate, and that honor went instead to Leonie Adams.

The Congressional then did what Congress always does in the face of voter rage, they passed a resolution that forced the Library of Congress to stop giving prizes or making awards. This ban on the Library of Congress giving out awards lasted for 40 years. A Congressional Joint Committee gave the Library approval for the resumption of prizes — in 1990 James Merrill won the $10,000 biennial Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry. (The prize is a memorial to the late Mrs Bobbitt, who was the sister of the late President Johnson.)

What follows are two poems by Mr. Pound. The first is Haiku-like:

In a Station of the Metro By Ezra Pound

The apparition of these faces in the crowd :
Petals on a wet, black bough .


Canto I By Ezra Pound

And then went down to the ship,
Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and
We set up mast and sail on tha swart ship,
Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also
Heavy with weeping, so winds from sternward
Bore us out onward with bellying canvas,
Circe's this craft, the trim-coifed goddess.
Then sat we amidships, wind jamming the tiller,
Thus with stretched sail, we went over sea till day's end.
Sun to his slumber, shadows o'er all the ocean,
Came we then to the bounds of deepest water,
To the Kimmerian lands, and peopled cities
Covered with close-webbed mist, unpierced ever
With glitter of sun-rays
Nor with stars stretched, nor looking back from heaven
Swartest night stretched over wretched men there.
The ocean flowing backward, came we then to the place
Aforesaid by Circe.
Here did they rites, Perimedes and Eurylochus,
And drawing sword from my hip
I dug the ell-square pitkin;
Poured we libations unto each the dead,
First mead and then sweet wine, water mixed with white flour.
Then prayed I many a prayer to the sickly death's-head;
As set in Ithaca, sterile bulls of the best
For sacrifice, heaping the pyre with goods,
A sheep to Tiresias only, black and a bell-sheep.
Dark blood flowed in the fosse,
Souls out of Erebus, cadaverous dead, of brides
Of youths and at the old who had borne much;
Souls stained with recent tears, girls tender,
Men many, mauled with bronze lance heads,
Battle spoil, bearing yet dreary arms,
These many crowded about me; with shouting,
Pallor upon me, cried to my men for more beasts;
Slaughtered the herds, sheep slain of bronze;
Poured ointment, cried to the gods,
To Pluto the strong, and praised Proserpine;
Unsheathed the narrow sword,
I sat to keep off the impetuous impotent dead,
Till I should hear Tiresias.
But first Elpenor came, our friend Elpenor,
Unburied, cast on the wide earth,
Limbs that we left in the house of Circe,
Unwept, unwrapped in sepulchre, since toils urged other.
Pitiful spirit. And I cried in hurried speech:
"Elpenor, how art thou come to this dark coast?
Cam'st thou afoot, outstripping seamen?"
And he in heavy speech:
"Ill fate and abundant wine.
I slept in Circe's ingle.
Going down the long ladder unguarded,
I fell against the buttress,
Shattered the nape-nerve, the soul sought Avernus.
But thou, O King, I bid remember me, unwept, unburied,
Heap up mine arms, be tomb by sea-bord, and inscribed:
A man of no fortune, and with a name to come.
And set my oar up, that I swung mid fellows."
And Anticlea came, whom I beat off, and then Tiresias Theban,
Holding his golden wand, knew me, and spoke first:
"A second time? why? man of ill star,
Facing the sunless dead and this joyless region?
Stand from the fosse, leave me my bloody bever
For soothsay." And I stepped back,
And he strong with the blood, said then: "Odysseus
Shalt return through spiteful Neptune,
over dark seas,Lose all companions."
And then Anticlea came.
Lie quiet Divus. I mean, that is Andreas Divus,
In officina Wecheli, 1538, out of Homer.
And he sailed, by Sirens and thence outward and away
And unto Circe. Venerandam,
In the Creatan's phrase, with the golden crown,
Aphrodite,Cypri munimenta sortita est,
mirthful, orichalchi, with golden
Girdles and breast bands, thou with dark eyelids
Bearing the golden bough of Argicida. So that: