Ezra Pound

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

It might seem that there is little more to be said about the life and personality of Ezra Pound, erudite poet, editor of The Waste Land, father of imagism and vorticism, helper of Joyce and many other major figures, the man who more than any other set modern poetry on its course. Yet in this incisive interpretive biography, based on interviews with those who knew him and a mass of published and unpublished Poundiana, Tytell examines the circumstances behind the poems and thereby generates new understanding of the man. In particular, he probes the ``tragic fracture'' in Pound's volcanic personality, those elements of vanity, arrogance and naivete that led him to espouse cranky socioeconomic theories, hero-worhip Mussolini, vilify Jews and Western democracyand after World War II spend more than a decade in a mental institution. Pound's unusual capacity for friendship and generosity was matched by an astonishing capacity for hatred, and the latter marred his Cantos and finally ruined his life. Tytell wrote Naked Angels, a study of the Beat Generation. Photos. (September 4)

Library Journal

Writing with the ease of a novelist and the precision of a documentarian, Tytell creates a moving and highly readable portrait of that tortured and self-destructive genius, Ezra Pound. Tytell's longest and best-written section deals with Pound's formative years in London (1908-1920). Pound made fruitful contact with Ford Madox Ford, Wyndham Lewis, W. B. Yeats, T. E. Hulme, Robert Frost, and T. S. Eliotand in the process helped to invent Imagism and the Modernist style in general. Tytell brilliantly exposes Pound's irascible and bellicose nature while maintaining sensitivity for Pound's artistry, particularly his making of the Pisan Cantos. In the end, we are left with the ``puzzle of a humanist'' who read everything in print while misreading the very world around him. Recommended for all larger collections. Daniel L. Guillory, English Dept., Millikin Univ., Decatur, Ill.