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Life of Ezra Pound
First published in 1970, this is a detailed and balanced biography of one of the most controversial literary figures of the twentieth century. Ezra Pound, an American who left home for Venice and London at the age of twenty-three, was a leading member of the modern movement, a friend and helper of Joyce, Eliot, Yeats, Hemingway, an early supporter of Lawrence and Frost. As a critic of modern society his far-reaching and controversial theories on politics, economics and religion led him to broadcast over Rome Radio during the Second World War, after which he was indicted for treason but declared insane by an American court. He then spent more than twelve years in St Elizabeth 's Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Washington, D.C. In 1958 the changes against him were dropped and he returned to Italy where he had lived between 1924 and 1945.
1 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1970
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 28, 2021
A highly entertaining read in spite of its subject; Pound was an egomaniac, a vastly overrated poet (his best work is the two-line 'Metro'), a supporter of fascism and a mental case. However, he also was present at a fascinating time in history, hobnobbing with imagists, dadaists and the lost generation, and Stock's book provides many insightful peeks at the various avant-garde movements of the period.
November 6, 2025
A review of The Life of Ezra Pound by Noel Stock must begin by acknowledging the phenomenal achievement of its author. It is comprehensive, detailed, forensic, appreciative, critical and illuminating, a massive achievement of analysis, research and insight. At around 200,000 words it is also a commitment, not for the fainthearted or for anyone with only a passing interest in either poetry or the history of the twentieth century. But it is also something else, something that, despite the magnificence of its scholarship, provokes this reader to focus on issues that are external to the text, itself. But more of that later: first, the book.
Ezra Pound was undeniably one of the greatest figures of twentieth century literature. Unlike his illustrious contemporaries and friends, however, Joyce, Eliot and Yeats among them, his name has seemed to slip from the mainstream since his death in 1972. I read his great achievement, the Cantos, when I was at college. I did not understand them. In some ways they feel less like a work of poetry than a lifetime achievement, a creatively conceived and sometimes over-presented commonplace book into which fell, in poetic form, a distillation, a reflection or sometimes mere mention of whatever disparate material that Pound obsessed over at the time. The Cantos were Pound’s creative life, but we must not forget the massive amount of other material, his journalism, music, prose and economics, for want of a more accurate word.
Pound was one of the founders and movers of literary and artistic movements: Imagism and the Vorticism among them. They were perhaps not the most enduring of directions. He was American but seemed more at home in England and then Italy, neither of which chooses to honour his achievements on their soil. But what is strongly felt about this man from the start is his conviction of, perhaps his obsession with his own genius. He was utterly sure he would contribute to the arts and perhaps even change their direction. He seemed to consider his legacy immortal, even before it had been created. He felt he was something new, original and enduring. And all this when apparently no-one even wanted to read his material, or formally give him time of day. And not only did he seem to deny his failures, he didn’t even seem to register them. The limitations were always somewhere else. In the early years, he thus seemed like a self-publicist, with his achievements acknowledged before they were achieved, like a modern self-published author who writes five-star, best-seller reviews of his own work. Nowadays, that surely would never do!
But eventually, perhaps by sheer dogged application alongside considerable talent, Pound received the recognition he thought he deserved, though perhaps never in our own contemporary, blunt instrument yardstick of success – sales. Certain academics loved him. Others did not. He himself had high hopes of a Nobel Prize.
Noel Stock includes copious quotations from Pound’s verse, always with critical assessment, sometimes with criticism. The Cantos were so far reaching in their intellectual coverage that it may appear from the outside that no-one without the full gamut of requisite skills would understand them. And given that these skills comprise, amongst other things, a knowledge of Dante and medieval Italian poetry, Confucius, Mencius and Lao-Tze in the original Chinese, troubadour songs in their original langue d’oc, Noh theatre texts in Japanese, Pound’s own experimental English, besides knowledge of the Classics and their metres, one might presume that there might be few modern readers of his work. This is probably accurate. But there is more to the modern shunning of Pound’s work than its overtly elitist intellectual demands. And it is here that this review needs to diverge from literature, poetry and indeed Ezra Pound, himself, to address the related concepts of fascism and racism.
The main reason why today Pound’s name remains passé is his espousal of fascist ideas and his overt antisemitism. He went to live in Italy. He regarded Mussolini as rather a good thing. In Italy at the time he was hardly alone in this belief. He adopted Hitler’s aggressive antisemitism because he was fundamentally opposed to capitalism, if it meant what he saw as a banking and economic system dominated by Jews, the foundation of this belief being a bank owned by the Rothchild family. He also took to broadcasting pro-fascist propaganda (in Italian and English) on radio during World War II.
Normally, my reviews are consciously detached. I try to review the book, not myself. Likes and dislikes are, to me, wholly nebulous and indefinable and even passing whims that are always less significant than considerations of communication or achievement of ends. In the case of The Life of Ezra Pound, the subjective “I” must be included, since our appreciation or not of this poet’s writing now seems to depend wholly on our individual take on his politics, despite his being be neither analytical or pro-active in his views, as this biography clarifies. In some ways, his politics were as transient as his current interests, as expressed in the meanderings of the Cantos. But what now can we make of Pound? Should we even try to understand him? Is dismissal the preferred option? I would say that he is worth the effort. Note the use of “I”! And this is not because I think Pound is a particular genius, overlooked or even readable. And I certainly do not see his actions as pardonable! And here I beg your pardon for making this book review become something personal, something about me and not about the book, but I assure you it is relevant. Please exit here if you are wary of the personal.
I remember in the recent past a well-known British television presenter saying on-air that the music of Wagner was not played in her household because of the composer´s antisemitism. I remember another celebrity saying that antisemitism was the flavour of Wager´s age, and that rejection of the composer´s work on those grounds alone ought to prompt a similar rejection of everything artistic or otherwise that came out of mid-nineteenth century German culture.
In the not too distant past I re-read Adam Smith´s Wealth of Nations. In my review I concentrated on those aspects of the analysis that might contradict the completely neo-liberal interpretation of the work. I was perhaps wrong to do so, but I wanted to challenge the idea that there is just one way to read Smith´s notion of free trade. Embedded within Smith´s thesis, however, are assumptions about human progress and worthiness. The Hindoo, the Mussulman and even the Catholic have their place in history and civilisation, but the heathen is judged to be a primitive sub-human. I do not recall Smith referring to ´The Buddhist´, but that may be my own failure of memory. In today´s politics, how many of the neo-liberal, perhaps neo-conservative supporters of their own notions of Smith´s concepts of free trade also regard those not associated with an organised great religion as both uncivilised and sub-human? And, given that the assumption appears to run throughout the work, should that alone disqualify Smith´s views on other subjects or his contribution to economics? Another position that almost dominates sections of The Wealth of Nations is that there is no economic activity that is or could be greater than the total that describes the state. How many of these same free marketeers would share Smith´s oft-stated revulsion of the very idea of a transnational corporation, which he regarded as necessarily market-distorting and almost automatically corrupt? This is recognized in antitrust and anti-monopoly legislation, but how often is this side of Smith´s work quoted? My point here is that we can choose to be selective, and usually do.
I am tempted here to introduce the composer Anton Webern into the argument. A member of the second Viennese School, Webern espoused the atonalism of his associate, Schoenberg. Webern was perhaps the artistic opposite of Ezra Pound, being prone to destructive self-criticism and a desire for an extreme succinctness of expression. But Webern, like Pound, thought that fascism might be more sympathetic towards “high art” to which he aspired than the mechanisms of capitalism that concentrated on what it could sell. He thus initially espoused fascism, eventually to his own and his associates´ cost.
After this considerable diversion, there is eventually a moral, and that is to beware anyone touting answers, especially those based on interpretations of the past in anything other than its own terms. Which brings me to Brexit! It might seem quite a jump, but it does follow. Trust me!
I have recent personal experience, albeit apocryphal, that suggests the prime motivation among the British working class leave voters who surely swung the referendum result was “getting rid of all the foreigners.” I use quotes to emphasise that this was expressed to me personally and verbatim, with stress on the “all”. I had just finished The Life of Ezra Pound and I felt immediately a strange yet strong link with Pound´s antisemitism, which was founded on nothing less than trying to find someone to blame.
Perhaps we should not judge Wagner, Adam Smith or even Ezra Pound using the moral perspective of our own time. For if we did that, and rejected any espousal of either racism or religious bigotry, how much of our human past would we retain? And, given the above Brexit opinion, is the moral perspective of our time significantly different from that of the 1930s, or even the 1850s, or 1770s or indeed any other time in our conflict-ridden blame game of history?
The Life of Ezra Pound is a forensic biography of a poet. It describes a life lived in its historical and cultural context. Like all books committed to communicating its subject, it is a masterpiece that takes the reader way beyond the confines of its subject and thereby achieves a permanent relevance. Revisit this past. We must never deny it existed or forget its consequences. But it reminds us that as individuals, communities and societies, there is no rule that precludes the repetition of error. And neither is there any rule that insists that a current moral ground need be any higher than any other existing folly, contemporary or past.
Ezra Pound was undeniably one of the greatest figures of twentieth century literature. Unlike his illustrious contemporaries and friends, however, Joyce, Eliot and Yeats among them, his name has seemed to slip from the mainstream since his death in 1972. I read his great achievement, the Cantos, when I was at college. I did not understand them. In some ways they feel less like a work of poetry than a lifetime achievement, a creatively conceived and sometimes over-presented commonplace book into which fell, in poetic form, a distillation, a reflection or sometimes mere mention of whatever disparate material that Pound obsessed over at the time. The Cantos were Pound’s creative life, but we must not forget the massive amount of other material, his journalism, music, prose and economics, for want of a more accurate word.
Pound was one of the founders and movers of literary and artistic movements: Imagism and the Vorticism among them. They were perhaps not the most enduring of directions. He was American but seemed more at home in England and then Italy, neither of which chooses to honour his achievements on their soil. But what is strongly felt about this man from the start is his conviction of, perhaps his obsession with his own genius. He was utterly sure he would contribute to the arts and perhaps even change their direction. He seemed to consider his legacy immortal, even before it had been created. He felt he was something new, original and enduring. And all this when apparently no-one even wanted to read his material, or formally give him time of day. And not only did he seem to deny his failures, he didn’t even seem to register them. The limitations were always somewhere else. In the early years, he thus seemed like a self-publicist, with his achievements acknowledged before they were achieved, like a modern self-published author who writes five-star, best-seller reviews of his own work. Nowadays, that surely would never do!
But eventually, perhaps by sheer dogged application alongside considerable talent, Pound received the recognition he thought he deserved, though perhaps never in our own contemporary, blunt instrument yardstick of success – sales. Certain academics loved him. Others did not. He himself had high hopes of a Nobel Prize.
Noel Stock includes copious quotations from Pound’s verse, always with critical assessment, sometimes with criticism. The Cantos were so far reaching in their intellectual coverage that it may appear from the outside that no-one without the full gamut of requisite skills would understand them. And given that these skills comprise, amongst other things, a knowledge of Dante and medieval Italian poetry, Confucius, Mencius and Lao-Tze in the original Chinese, troubadour songs in their original langue d’oc, Noh theatre texts in Japanese, Pound’s own experimental English, besides knowledge of the Classics and their metres, one might presume that there might be few modern readers of his work. This is probably accurate. But there is more to the modern shunning of Pound’s work than its overtly elitist intellectual demands. And it is here that this review needs to diverge from literature, poetry and indeed Ezra Pound, himself, to address the related concepts of fascism and racism.
The main reason why today Pound’s name remains passé is his espousal of fascist ideas and his overt antisemitism. He went to live in Italy. He regarded Mussolini as rather a good thing. In Italy at the time he was hardly alone in this belief. He adopted Hitler’s aggressive antisemitism because he was fundamentally opposed to capitalism, if it meant what he saw as a banking and economic system dominated by Jews, the foundation of this belief being a bank owned by the Rothchild family. He also took to broadcasting pro-fascist propaganda (in Italian and English) on radio during World War II.
Normally, my reviews are consciously detached. I try to review the book, not myself. Likes and dislikes are, to me, wholly nebulous and indefinable and even passing whims that are always less significant than considerations of communication or achievement of ends. In the case of The Life of Ezra Pound, the subjective “I” must be included, since our appreciation or not of this poet’s writing now seems to depend wholly on our individual take on his politics, despite his being be neither analytical or pro-active in his views, as this biography clarifies. In some ways, his politics were as transient as his current interests, as expressed in the meanderings of the Cantos. But what now can we make of Pound? Should we even try to understand him? Is dismissal the preferred option? I would say that he is worth the effort. Note the use of “I”! And this is not because I think Pound is a particular genius, overlooked or even readable. And I certainly do not see his actions as pardonable! And here I beg your pardon for making this book review become something personal, something about me and not about the book, but I assure you it is relevant. Please exit here if you are wary of the personal.
I remember in the recent past a well-known British television presenter saying on-air that the music of Wagner was not played in her household because of the composer´s antisemitism. I remember another celebrity saying that antisemitism was the flavour of Wager´s age, and that rejection of the composer´s work on those grounds alone ought to prompt a similar rejection of everything artistic or otherwise that came out of mid-nineteenth century German culture.
In the not too distant past I re-read Adam Smith´s Wealth of Nations. In my review I concentrated on those aspects of the analysis that might contradict the completely neo-liberal interpretation of the work. I was perhaps wrong to do so, but I wanted to challenge the idea that there is just one way to read Smith´s notion of free trade. Embedded within Smith´s thesis, however, are assumptions about human progress and worthiness. The Hindoo, the Mussulman and even the Catholic have their place in history and civilisation, but the heathen is judged to be a primitive sub-human. I do not recall Smith referring to ´The Buddhist´, but that may be my own failure of memory. In today´s politics, how many of the neo-liberal, perhaps neo-conservative supporters of their own notions of Smith´s concepts of free trade also regard those not associated with an organised great religion as both uncivilised and sub-human? And, given that the assumption appears to run throughout the work, should that alone disqualify Smith´s views on other subjects or his contribution to economics? Another position that almost dominates sections of The Wealth of Nations is that there is no economic activity that is or could be greater than the total that describes the state. How many of these same free marketeers would share Smith´s oft-stated revulsion of the very idea of a transnational corporation, which he regarded as necessarily market-distorting and almost automatically corrupt? This is recognized in antitrust and anti-monopoly legislation, but how often is this side of Smith´s work quoted? My point here is that we can choose to be selective, and usually do.
I am tempted here to introduce the composer Anton Webern into the argument. A member of the second Viennese School, Webern espoused the atonalism of his associate, Schoenberg. Webern was perhaps the artistic opposite of Ezra Pound, being prone to destructive self-criticism and a desire for an extreme succinctness of expression. But Webern, like Pound, thought that fascism might be more sympathetic towards “high art” to which he aspired than the mechanisms of capitalism that concentrated on what it could sell. He thus initially espoused fascism, eventually to his own and his associates´ cost.
After this considerable diversion, there is eventually a moral, and that is to beware anyone touting answers, especially those based on interpretations of the past in anything other than its own terms. Which brings me to Brexit! It might seem quite a jump, but it does follow. Trust me!
I have recent personal experience, albeit apocryphal, that suggests the prime motivation among the British working class leave voters who surely swung the referendum result was “getting rid of all the foreigners.” I use quotes to emphasise that this was expressed to me personally and verbatim, with stress on the “all”. I had just finished The Life of Ezra Pound and I felt immediately a strange yet strong link with Pound´s antisemitism, which was founded on nothing less than trying to find someone to blame.
Perhaps we should not judge Wagner, Adam Smith or even Ezra Pound using the moral perspective of our own time. For if we did that, and rejected any espousal of either racism or religious bigotry, how much of our human past would we retain? And, given the above Brexit opinion, is the moral perspective of our time significantly different from that of the 1930s, or even the 1850s, or 1770s or indeed any other time in our conflict-ridden blame game of history?
The Life of Ezra Pound is a forensic biography of a poet. It describes a life lived in its historical and cultural context. Like all books committed to communicating its subject, it is a masterpiece that takes the reader way beyond the confines of its subject and thereby achieves a permanent relevance. Revisit this past. We must never deny it existed or forget its consequences. But it reminds us that as individuals, communities and societies, there is no rule that precludes the repetition of error. And neither is there any rule that insists that a current moral ground need be any higher than any other existing folly, contemporary or past.
March 14, 2023
This was my first time to read a biography on Ezra Loomis Pound, one of the greatest (if not the greatest) poets of the 20th Century.
Pound's life and legacy are controversial due to his arrest at the end of WWII for his anti-Roosevelt, pro-Mussolini radio broadcasts during the war (from Italy). He was arrested and detained in 1945 on charges of treason but being declared 'mentally unfit for trial' they end up sending him to the looney bin - a place called St. Elizabeths Hospital where he stayed for about 12 years before finally being released. For those of you unfamiliar with Pound, these are the more controversial aspects of Pound's life and the ones you are probably bound to hear first. But it only tells part of the story.
Up until the mid-1930s, before Pound turned into a rabid anti-Semite, not due to any childhood prejudices but due to the anti-Semitic monetary reformers he was corresponding with, and due to his slow but eventual slide into conspiracy theory and paranoia, he was actually a very respectable and talented poet.
The Cantos, which is an incredibly difficult and baffling work is also at times extremely beautiful and uplifting. Check out Canto 4 and 81 just for two famous examples. His canto 45 is also very famous as it contains one of most famous bugbears - the spectre of usury. He hates usurious bankers possibly more than any other criminal in the world (white-collar or blue-collar) and it is this hatred that unfortunately leads him to start pointing fingers at Jews in the world, and their so-called conspiracy to take over the world.
Sounds like a crank? Well from the mid-1930s onwards you would be forgiven for thinking so. The problem is it's not as simple as that. We should not be as dismissive of Pound as many have tended to be. His early poetry such as Cathay and his early works of prose such as The Spirit of Romance are radiantly beautiful and full of amazing insight for a man of his age. Even Guide to Kulchur (his strongest prose work in my opinion), which was written in the mid- to late-1930s, shows a man whose mind is constantly jumping from one topic to another but when he is able to focus, he is able to unveil amazing insights into poetry, mythology, spirituality, history and occasionally economics, but his study of economics (more a serious hobbyhorse than a specialty) is often flawed, not only because it's not his main area but also because the people he believed in such as Douglas and Kitson had flawed beliefs themselves. Some other critics have also said that Pound lacked the ability to think in abstract terms, which meant he was not equipped to analyze the incredibly complex theoretical and practical aspects of economic science.
Although this biography clearly focuses on Pound, it was also very revealing in what it says about other famous figures and writers who lived during what Hugh Kenner famously called 'The Pound Era'. The portraits of Ford Madox Ford (Hueffer), Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, Wyndham Lewis and other less known but important people in Pound's life such as Bride Scratton and George Santayana were extremely interesting. We come away with the feeling that Pound seemed to be THE man of the early 20th century, somehow magically cloning himself to be here, there, and everywhere, a finger in every new idea or revolutionary pie, always looking to be a part of the action, which relates to his interest in the 'vortex' I believe.
By the end of the biography, you come away with a fascinating portrait of an extremely intelligent, talented but deeply flawed and complicated man. Pound's greatest attributes, which are his best poems (in The Cantos and Personae mostly), and some of his stunning prose (The Spirit of Romance and Guide to Kulchur are the two major prose standouts that I have read to date), and even more importantly, his completely unselfish devotion and generousness towards helping others he believed in and fought for (Hemingway, Joyce, Eliot and others all attest to this) are all aspects we should admire and keep in mind before judging and condemning the more reprehensible aspects - the Anti-Semitism, the arrogance, the short temper (which comes out more later on with his bitterness), and even his womanizing (which is an aspect somewhat less focused on by Stock in this account).
Although this is a very good biography overall, there were 2 points I did not like. First of all, the greatest weakness of this biography is that the biographer, Noel Stock, was too close to Pound, too partial and biased. This becomes clear in how forgiving he is of Pound's anti-Semitism, and how he does not even touch upon Pound's womanizing (his affair with Olga Rudge and Bride Scratton among others). Secondly, there were certain aspects of Pound's larger-than-life biography that I felt Stock skipped over too quickly - especially Pound's childhood. He covers Pound's early years in a couple of short chapters and then suddenly we encounter the poet travelling to and publishing in Venice. I suspect that other larger biographies (by Carpenter and Moody for example) will go more into the early years of Pound, which I think is important because we need to explore what shaped the man, both in good and bad ways. Often things that happen to us when we are young do shape our thoughts, decisions and actions as adults, even though we don't often notice it.
These two objections put gently aside, this is a biography worth reading, and if you are like me in the sense of not having enough time to read a proper, fuller account, i.e. a 1000-page finger-burning biography, then this is probably good enough in my opinion.
I plan to read Humphrey Carpenter's biography on Pound, A Serious Character, next year to get more information on Pound's absolutely fascinating life, and to see how it measures up to this one by Stock, which I believe is one of the very earliest biographies on Pound to hit the shelves.
Recommended for Pound fans but perhaps not THE best biography on the poet T. S. Eliot once called "il miglior fabbro" ("the better craftsman").
Pound's life and legacy are controversial due to his arrest at the end of WWII for his anti-Roosevelt, pro-Mussolini radio broadcasts during the war (from Italy). He was arrested and detained in 1945 on charges of treason but being declared 'mentally unfit for trial' they end up sending him to the looney bin - a place called St. Elizabeths Hospital where he stayed for about 12 years before finally being released. For those of you unfamiliar with Pound, these are the more controversial aspects of Pound's life and the ones you are probably bound to hear first. But it only tells part of the story.
Up until the mid-1930s, before Pound turned into a rabid anti-Semite, not due to any childhood prejudices but due to the anti-Semitic monetary reformers he was corresponding with, and due to his slow but eventual slide into conspiracy theory and paranoia, he was actually a very respectable and talented poet.
The Cantos, which is an incredibly difficult and baffling work is also at times extremely beautiful and uplifting. Check out Canto 4 and 81 just for two famous examples. His canto 45 is also very famous as it contains one of most famous bugbears - the spectre of usury. He hates usurious bankers possibly more than any other criminal in the world (white-collar or blue-collar) and it is this hatred that unfortunately leads him to start pointing fingers at Jews in the world, and their so-called conspiracy to take over the world.
Sounds like a crank? Well from the mid-1930s onwards you would be forgiven for thinking so. The problem is it's not as simple as that. We should not be as dismissive of Pound as many have tended to be. His early poetry such as Cathay and his early works of prose such as The Spirit of Romance are radiantly beautiful and full of amazing insight for a man of his age. Even Guide to Kulchur (his strongest prose work in my opinion), which was written in the mid- to late-1930s, shows a man whose mind is constantly jumping from one topic to another but when he is able to focus, he is able to unveil amazing insights into poetry, mythology, spirituality, history and occasionally economics, but his study of economics (more a serious hobbyhorse than a specialty) is often flawed, not only because it's not his main area but also because the people he believed in such as Douglas and Kitson had flawed beliefs themselves. Some other critics have also said that Pound lacked the ability to think in abstract terms, which meant he was not equipped to analyze the incredibly complex theoretical and practical aspects of economic science.
Although this biography clearly focuses on Pound, it was also very revealing in what it says about other famous figures and writers who lived during what Hugh Kenner famously called 'The Pound Era'. The portraits of Ford Madox Ford (Hueffer), Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, Wyndham Lewis and other less known but important people in Pound's life such as Bride Scratton and George Santayana were extremely interesting. We come away with the feeling that Pound seemed to be THE man of the early 20th century, somehow magically cloning himself to be here, there, and everywhere, a finger in every new idea or revolutionary pie, always looking to be a part of the action, which relates to his interest in the 'vortex' I believe.
By the end of the biography, you come away with a fascinating portrait of an extremely intelligent, talented but deeply flawed and complicated man. Pound's greatest attributes, which are his best poems (in The Cantos and Personae mostly), and some of his stunning prose (The Spirit of Romance and Guide to Kulchur are the two major prose standouts that I have read to date), and even more importantly, his completely unselfish devotion and generousness towards helping others he believed in and fought for (Hemingway, Joyce, Eliot and others all attest to this) are all aspects we should admire and keep in mind before judging and condemning the more reprehensible aspects - the Anti-Semitism, the arrogance, the short temper (which comes out more later on with his bitterness), and even his womanizing (which is an aspect somewhat less focused on by Stock in this account).
Although this is a very good biography overall, there were 2 points I did not like. First of all, the greatest weakness of this biography is that the biographer, Noel Stock, was too close to Pound, too partial and biased. This becomes clear in how forgiving he is of Pound's anti-Semitism, and how he does not even touch upon Pound's womanizing (his affair with Olga Rudge and Bride Scratton among others). Secondly, there were certain aspects of Pound's larger-than-life biography that I felt Stock skipped over too quickly - especially Pound's childhood. He covers Pound's early years in a couple of short chapters and then suddenly we encounter the poet travelling to and publishing in Venice. I suspect that other larger biographies (by Carpenter and Moody for example) will go more into the early years of Pound, which I think is important because we need to explore what shaped the man, both in good and bad ways. Often things that happen to us when we are young do shape our thoughts, decisions and actions as adults, even though we don't often notice it.
These two objections put gently aside, this is a biography worth reading, and if you are like me in the sense of not having enough time to read a proper, fuller account, i.e. a 1000-page finger-burning biography, then this is probably good enough in my opinion.
I plan to read Humphrey Carpenter's biography on Pound, A Serious Character, next year to get more information on Pound's absolutely fascinating life, and to see how it measures up to this one by Stock, which I believe is one of the very earliest biographies on Pound to hit the shelves.
Recommended for Pound fans but perhaps not THE best biography on the poet T. S. Eliot once called "il miglior fabbro" ("the better craftsman").
January 24, 2025
Noel Stock has written the most detailed biography of the poet, Ezra Pound. Stock has meticulously researched his life and brought to life Pound’s life in Europe and America and the nuanced days of WWII and Pound’s muddled broadcasts in Italy in support of fascism. Before all that controversy, Pound was one of the century’s greatest poets who helped many other struggling writers in Paris.
If you want one book on Pound - read this.
If you want one book on Pound - read this.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews