Born Oct. 30, 1885, in Hailey, Idaho; died Nov. 1, 1972, in Venice. American poet, historian, and art theorist.

Pound attended the University of Pennsylvania. In 1908 he left for Europe, settling in Italy in 1924. He studied the medieval poetry of the Romance countries and brought it to public attention. Through Pound’s adaptations, the English-language reader first became acquainted with the poetry of China and Japan. During World War II (1939-45), Pound broadcast from Italy to Allied troops over Fascist radio. Indicted for high treason in the USA in 1945, he was later confined for life in a mental hospital. He returned to Italy after his release in 1958.

Pound made his debut as a poet in 1909, with the collection A Lume Spento. He was a theorist of imagism. Pound’s anarchist bent was evident as early as the 1910’s in the collections Ripostes (1912), Personae (1909), and Cathay (1915). His leanings later prodded him into an alliance with rightist opposition forces, as can be seen in the narrative poem Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920). Pound broadened the thematic range of English-language poetry and enriched its store of artistic devices. The extreme formal complexity of Pound’s magnum opus, the unfinished Cantos (1917–68), is typical of modernist poetry, which undermines all ties with the reader. In terms of creativity, the last three decades of Pound’s life were barren.