American poet Ezra Pound was a Fascist sympathizer tried for treason and a rabid Anti-Semite who spent twelve years in a mental hospital.
Creative writing students are still forced to consider at length the minimalist beauty of his:
IN A STATION OF THE METRO
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet black bough.
And
THE BEAUTIFUL TOILET
Blue, blue is the grass about the river
And the willows have overfilled the close garden.
And within, the mistress, in the midmost of her youth,
White, white of face, hesitates, passing the door.
Slender, she puts forth a slender hand;
Blue, blue is the grass about the river
And the willows have overfilled the close garden.
And within, the mistress, in the midmost of her youth,
White, white of face, hesitates, passing the door.
Slender, she puts forth a slender hand;
And she was a courtezan in the old days,
And she has married a sot,
Who now goes drunkenly out
And leaves her too much alone.
And she has married a sot,
Who now goes drunkenly out
And leaves her too much alone.
While his verse is undeniably powerful and skilled, there's more to it than that. Pound continues to be adored by academia because he didn't write about himself.
Other poets of his time were writing about their personal lives. But Pound forced himself to learn Confuciansim and Noh theater. In addition to poetry he wrote prose essays and basically brought Chinese poetry to America in translation.
He was ambitious, and this ambition is why academics love him. He is still considered one of the "most influential and innovative poets of the modernist period".
And in the best part of his craziness, he was convinced poetry would move civilization forward.
Pound died a semi-recluse in Venice in 1972.
