From Harpoons to Baboons

EZRA POUND (1885–1972) has been called a poetic visionary, and “the inventor of modern English poetry.” 


Pound's lyric genius, superb technique, and profound insights ensured his reputation as one of the few men who throughout the centuries have kept poetry alive, ever growing and relevant. 


In the early twentieth century, he was famous for the generosity with which he championed the work of such major contemporaries as Ernest Hemingway, William Carlos Williams, Robert Frost, Marianne Moore, T.S. Eliot, and James Joyce: he was singularly responsible for the publication in 1918 of Joyce’s Ulysses, and in 1915 of Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.


The verse and critical essays he produced during these years largely determined the directions of creative writing in our time; virtually every major poet in England and America today has acknowledged his influence. 


Hemingway wrote: “The best of Pound's writing – and it is in the Cantos – will last as long as there is any literature.” 




The Cantos have been called the single most important epic poem of the twentieth century.


PHILIP DOSSICK is the New York Times critically acclaimed writer and director of the motion picture The P.O.W. He has written for television, including the outstanding drama, Transplant, produced by David Susskind for CBS. His most recent books include Aztecs: Epoch Of Social Revolution, Sex And Dreams, Mark Twain In Seattle, Oscar Wilde: Sodomy and Heresy, The Naked Citizen: Notes On Privacy In The Twenty-First Century, Raymond Chowder And Bob Skloot Must Die, The Deposition, Vincent Van Gogh: Madness and Magic, Lenny Bruce: The Myth of Free Speech, Ghost Dance Prophets: From Martin Luther King to Mahatma Gandhi, and Times That Try Men’s Souls: Henry David Thoreau and Thomas Paine on Slavery and Civil Disobedience.