It’s a false idea—the notion that artists inevitably embrace a politically liberal or ostensibly “progressive” position. Ezra Pound, one of the founding figures of modern literature, voluntarily worked with Italy’s Fascists during World War II. His broadcasts to American GIs emphasized flaws in the American system and called for hanging “Yids” alongside Franklin D. Roosevelt. War’s end found him under arrest, charged with treason, shipped home under armed guard to await trial. But his lawyer pled insanity and the poet was confined for 13 years at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital near Washington, D.C. After his release in 1958 he returned to Italy where he remained for the rest of his life.
Wrestling with Pound’s legacy and the meaning of his confinement in The Bughouse, British literary scholar Daniel Swift examines the hospital’s medical records and the diary entries and letters of the many writers who visited the poet. Pound held court in his asylum, behaving like modernism’s irascible uncle. Robert Lowell even addressed him as “Uncle Ezra” and despite his politics, Pound continued to influence the first post-World War II generation of American poets. Rebellion takes many avenues and Pound’s revolt against literary and social conventions brought him to strange places. Swift’s verdict: Pound “was neither quite mad nor sane.” Pound’s own words upon release: “All America is an insane asylum.”
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