Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound married Dorothy Shakespear on 20 April 1914, while he was a budding poet in London. They had one son Omar, who was raised by Dorothy’s mother Olivia Shakespear. Pound hardly knew him.

He also had a life-long affair with American violinist Olga Rudge, whom he met in 1922 while he was living in Paris and with whom he had a daughter named Mary. Although Dorothy accepted the liaison, Mary never knew about her father’s other family until he told her just before his arrest.

Both the women Dorothy and Olga stood by him during his arrest and subsequent release. However, it was Olga who took care of Pound during the last eleven years of his life, while Dorothy lived in London with their son Omar. Unlike his relationship with Omar, Pound was close to Mary and lived with her for some time.

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was born on 30 October 1885 in the small mining town of Hailey, then a part of the Territory of Idaho. At the time of his birth, his father, Homer Loomis Pound, originally from Wisconsin, was employed as the Registrar of the General Land Office in Hailey.

Ezra’s mother, Isabel Weston, was from New York. She could not adjust to the life at Hailey and in 1887 she returned to New York, taking eighteen-month-old Ezra with her. Subsequently Homer too followed them. Ezra remained their only child.

In 1889, Homer was appointed an assayer at the Philadelphia Mint and with that the family moved to Jenkintown, located just outside the city. There in 1892, Ezra began his education at the Miss Elliot’s dame school.

Ezra spent a major part of his early years at Wyncote where his father bought a house in 1893. Here he was first enrolled at the Heathcock family's Chelten Hills School. Later in 1894, he was moved to the Florence Ridpath School.

In 1896, while studying at Florence Ridpath School, eleven-year-old Ezra had his first poem published. It was a limerick on the Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan, who had narrowly lost the 1896 Presidential Election. It was published in the 7 November issue of the ‘Jenkintown Times-Chronicle.’

Subsequently, he left for Europe sometime in February 1908, arriving at Gibraltar on 23 March. Here he worked for few weeks as a guide to American tourists, earning $15 a day and then moved to Venice in April. At that time, he had only $80 in his kitty.

While in the USA, he had compiled a book of poems, titled ‘A Lume Spento’, but failed to find a publisher for it. Now in Venice, he spent $8 out of his own pocket to self-publish the work. The initial edition was of one hundred copies.

Later that year he moved to London and there he was able to persuade Elkin Mathews, a London publisher and book seller, to display his book. Although it did not have the kind of impact he had expected, by October, he had begun to be discussed in the literary circles.

In December 1908, he self-published another book of poems, titled ‘A Quinzaine for This Yule’ and then spent the following two months teaching at Regent Street Polytechnic. Meanwhile, he managed to persuade Mathews to publish his next three books.

Out of the three, ‘Personae of Ezra Pound’ was published in April 1909. It was his first commercial success and was followed by his fourth book of poems, ‘Exultations of Ezra Pound’, published in October 1909. The next book, ‘The Spirit of Romance’, published in 1910, was on literary criticism.

In 1912, Pound was appointed London correspondent of ‘Poetry’, a Chicago based magazine founded by Harriet Monroe. He worked hard on it, reviewing the works of many upcoming poets like Robert Frost and D. H. Lawrence. Very soon, he became a well-established name in London’s literary circles.

Sometime in the same year, Pound, along with Richard Aldington and Hilda Doolitle decided to start a movement they called Imagism. The main theme of the movement was that, any word that does not contribute directly to the presentation should be avoided.

In October 1912, he had ‘Ripostes of Ezra Pound’ published. The book, containing twenty-five poems, is his first example of Imagism. This was also the book, in which he for the first time used the word ‘Imagiste.’

Subsequently, he began writing for ‘Egoist’ and in 1914, published ‘Des Imagistes’, the first anthology of the Imagism movement. In the same year, he also started collaborating with then un-known James Joyce and helped to publish his two novels, ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’ and ‘Ulysses.’

At the same time, Pound continued with his own literary pursuits, starting his long poem, ‘The Cantos’ in 1915. However, he was not very earnest in this work for it took him two years to publish ‘Canto III’ in ‘Poetry.’