This first book-length study of Pound criticism investigates not just what critics have had to say about Pound but also why they have asked the questions they have asked. Forty-five years after his death, and more than seventy years after his indictment for treason, Ezra Pound remains a deeply controversial figure. Today it is hard to imagine a poet sparking national debate, but Pound did just that. His receipt in 1949 of the first-ever Bollingen Award for Poetry started a hue and cry that spread to every US periodical that made even a pretense of following "cultural" issues: even Time weighed in. It took two years for things to simmer down, and when they finally did, literary study looked profoundly different. Everyone engaged in the study of poetry today, professors and students alike, works in an environment shaped by that national crisis of conscience. The present book considers this untold story, and investigates not just what critics have had to say about Pound but also why they have asked the questions they have asked. It is routine for reception histories to distinguish between professional studies and more popular responses; this book encourages us to consider why we make that distinction and what the costs of doing so might be. Unprofessional responses to Pound have often been ideologically and politically embarrassing for Pound scholars, who have in response policed the distinction between professional and popular readings with extraordinary vigilance. As a result, the history of Pound's reception unfolds as a kind of drama-perhaps the last ongoing theater for McCarthyite cultural-political anxieties.

Showcases Ezra Pound's close involvement with the arts throughout his career The present volume of new, interdisciplinary scholarship investigates the arts with which Pound had a lifelong interaction including architecture, ballet, cinema, music, painting, photography and sculpture. Divided into 5 historically and thematically arranged sections, the 28 chapters foreground the shifting significance of art forms throughout Pound's life which he spent in London, Paris, Rapallo and Washington. The Companion maps Pound's practices of engagement with the arts, deepening areas of study that have recently emerged, such as his musical compositions. At the same time, it opens up new fields, particularly Pound's interaction with the performing arts: opera, dance, and cinema. The volume demonstrates overall that Ezra Pound was no mere spectator of the modernist revolution in the arts; rather he was an agent of change, a doer and promoter who also had a deep emotional response to the arts. Key Features: The first book to gather together all the different aspects of the subject of Pound and the arts Chapters are devoted to topics never covered before: (cinema; political anarchism; early music; Agnes Bedford; the artists Munch, Lekakis, Martinelli, Frampton) Presents the ways Pound's interests and activities in the arts change over time in a continuous story, from his beginnings to his old age Includes portraits of friendships and short biographies of artists connected to Pound, showing his personal impact in the arts world