Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound was born on October 30, 1885, in Hailey, Idaho. He was the only child of Homer Loomis Pound, a Federal Land Office official, and his wife, Isabel. He spent the bulk of his childhood just outside Philadelphia, where his father had moved the family after accepting a job with the U.S. Mint. He attended Cheltenham Military Academy, for two years but finished his finished his high school education at a local public school. At the age of 15 he told his parents that he wanted to be a poet. Though his chosen career wasn't something he had inherited directly from his more conventional parents, Homer and Isabel were supportive of their son's choice.

In 1907, Pound accepted a teaching job at Indiana's Wabash College. However, he soon left cause of his slightly bohemian and artistic nature which made the job less perfect. He studied literature and languages in college and in 1908 with just $80 in his pocket; he set sail for Europe, and landed in Venice brimming with confidence that he would soon make a name for himself in the world of poetry, where he published several successful books of poetry. With his own money, Pound paid for the publication of his first book of poems, "A Lume Spento."

He was outraged by the loss of life during the WWI, he lost faith in England, after which he embraced Mussolini’s fascism, expressed support for Hitler and wrote for publications owned by Oswald Mosley. He spent months in detention in a U.S. military camp in Pisa, including 25 days in a six-by-six-foot outdoor steel cage that triggered a mental breakdown. Deemed unfit to stand trial, he was incarcerated in St. Elizabeth’s psychiatric hospital in Washington D.C, for over 12 years and was released from in 1958, thanks to a campaign by his fellow writers, and returned to live in Italy until his death.