Ezra Pound and the Making of Modernism

It gradually became clearer to me, as I studied his vast and complex work, that Pound was the mastermind of Modernism... So argues William Pratt in his new critical study Ezra Pound and the Making of Modernism. In ten essays, several of which are based upon Pratt's presentations at Ezra Pound International Conferences, he locates Pound firmly at the center of a second great international Renaissance, the Modernism that through Pound grew from the French Realist and Symbolist literatures of the nineteenth century. Pratt's extensive knowledge of Pound's self-education, literary precursors, biography, and life's work shapes this chronological evaluation of Pound's tremendous influence on twentieth-century poetry. The text traces Modernism's origins back to Pound's launching of Imagism in 1912 and follows his impact on the developing movement from his early aesthetic declarations and his friendships with Modernism's pantheon including Yeats and Eliot - of whose ""The Waste Land Pound"" was the editor. Pratt also depicts Pound's evolution as a poet and the effects of residencies in France, Italy, and America on his writing. Critical discussions of Pound's artistic intentions as a translator, characteristic employment of multiple languages in his own poetry, and encyclopedic knowledge of global poetic traditions are expanded with reference to Pound's private letters and Pratt's reminiscences of meetings with the poet and his wife, Dorothy. Above all, this informed study argues that it is not merely for his internationalism, imagery, or metrical prowess that Pound was central to a poetic movement. Pound emerges as an innovator of historical import, an exceptionally gifted editor, and an influential educator of other poets: a true Father of Modernism.