Description:
Leader of the avant-garde, promoter of other writers, and prisoner, poet Ezra Pound's complex nature is examined in this episode of the Voices & Visions series. On hand to explain Pound's life are his mistress, their daughter, critic Alfred Kazin, and publisher James Laughlin who insists the poet was "not a fascist, but a damn fool...." Although American born and educated, Pound left the U.S. for England early in his career, which was marked by political activism as well as poetry. This video uses a combination of actors reading from Pound's works and recordings of the author, including excerpts of the World War II
Leader of the avant-garde, promoter of other writers, and prisoner, poet Ezra Pound's complex nature is examined in this episode of the Voices & Visions series. On hand to explain Pound's life are his mistress, their daughter, critic Alfred Kazin, and publisher James Laughlin who insists the poet was "not a fascist, but a damn fool...." Although American born and educated, Pound left the U.S. for England early in his career, which was marked by political activism as well as poetry. This video uses a combination of actors reading from Pound's works and recordings of the author, including excerpts of the World War II broadcasts from Italy that caused him to be charged with treason and incarcerated in an American mental hospital for more than a decade. His life as an expatriate is detailed as well as his unhappy ménage à trois with his lover Olga Rudge and his wife and collaborator Dorothy Shakespear, and his tireless promotion of other writers including T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Ernest Hemingway. An American GI describes the prisoner Pound working away at The Cantos, which took much of his life to write, and his daughter describes his sad post-hospital life. --Kimberly Heinrichs -- review 1 -- Visions and Voices is a spectacular video series and this particular biography of Ezra Pound is a wonderfully balanced portrait. It is a shame that someone so central to the development of modern literature has had his contributions in that area overshadowed by his peculiar economic theories and vehement anti-Semitism. These aspects of his career are explored from varied points of view and highlighted with beautiful haunting readings of his poetry. The incantation quality of Pound's verse was delightfully displayed both by a reader and by readings recorded by Pound himself. All the quirks, all the genius and all the destructive obsessions of Ezra Pound are delivered in this informative and artful video biography. -- review 2 -- I have study Pound under Hugh Kenner, at UCSB. I was English major, and Pound turned me onto ancient Greek, Florence, and much of cultural history. He was also an enigma. His happiest years were spent in St. Elizabeth's mental hospital, and much of his philosophy would be appreciated by modern skinheads and the Montana malita. As a youth I was taught and assumed that poets were philosophers, Pound of course proved that theory wrong. Some of Pound's work is of course inspired. Some is depraved, paranoid and insane. Pound's impact on modern literature is undeniable to those who have studied him. A genius, he was disappointing and misguided in life.Most of the drama of his life, his association with Eliot, Hemmingway, Picassos, Gaudier and Joyce, his support of Mussolini and subsequent arrest, trail and commitment to a mental hospital to escape charges of treason are not well documented in this video. This is one of the few videos/films on Pound. So the images are much of what is available to date.
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Number of discs: 1
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