Poet in Exile

Book excerpt: Half a century after he first made his entry into the literary life of London, Ezra Pound is one of the best-known, yet least-known, of modern poets. The aim of this book is not to explain Pound's work, but to attempt to clarify certain definite aspects of it and to cut through the tangle of opinions, favourable and unfavourable, and the various irrlevancies, some stemming from Pound himself, which prevent many readers from getting at the best of it. The book is designed to present not only the poet who broke new ground and was, with Eliot, in the vanguard of the modern movement, but also the man, as critic of modern society, with his far-reaching and controversial theories on politics, economics and philosophy.