Hugh Selwyn Mauberley

Ezra Pound was a modernist poet and critic who admired the sparseness and imagery of Japanese poetry. He befriended and aided numerous young writers including T.S. Eliot and Hemingway, admired Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini and was a self declared fascist. He engaged in fascist propaganda in world war two for the axis powers and against his native land, hated F.D. Roosevelt and despised the Jews who he blamed for much that was wrong in the world.
After the war he was arrested by American armed forces and imprisoned in a looney bin for 12 years.

All of this does not add up to Mr. Pound being much of a human being and yet his poetry is stunning. He is praised by critics for his economy of language but more accurately he is the master of making less into more. Pound could write the Odyssey in 200 words and make it better and more memorable.

His greatest accomplishment is the Cantos (not all written at one time) however this poem is a superb example of his early poetry. I can not like him but must admire his work.