Ezra Pound

Poet and critic Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (October 30 1885 - November 1 1972) was, along with T. S. Eliot, one of the major figures of the modernism movement in early 20th century poetry.

He is noted as the editor of Eliot's The Waste Land, which he pared down to become the major poem that it is today.

Pound was an American citizen, but during World War II he lived in Italy and supported the Fascist regime of Mussolini there, broadcasting anti-American propaganda. After the war, he was incarcerated in a open cage in outdoors Pisa for six months, then transfered to the US where he was tried for treason, found insane and subsequently imprisoned in a mental institution for 12 years.

He was an adept of foreign languages, having studied Spanish, ancient Greek, Latin, Italian, French, Provençal, Chinese, Japanese, Hindi, Anglo-Saxon and ancient Egyptian. His works frequently featured untranslated passages in some of these.

Major works include the Cantos. Probably his most famous work is the haiku-like "In a Station of the Metro."