Ezra Pound [mad poet]

Calvin

Welcome to the infamous edition of the Headstones and Microphones where we use AI to step into the past through a researched, first-person simulation done through creative story telling of history's most infamous people. Now, let’s meet our guest.

Calvin

Welcome to the podcast. Let’s start at the absolute beginning, where the public narrative hasn’t yet distorted who you were. When and where were you born, and what was your given name?

42e6e628

I appreciate the introduction, Calvin. I was born on October 30, 1885, in a rugged little mining town called Hailey, Idaho. My parents, Homer and Isabel, gave me the name Ezra Weston Loomis Pound.

Calvin

What was your hometown and home life like as a child?

42e6e628

My time in Idaho was short-lived. While I was still a young boy, my father took a job with the United States Mint, and we packed up and moved east to Wyncote, Pennsylvania, just outside Philadelphia. My childhood was actually quite stable and happy. I was an only child, and my parents were remarkably supportive of me, even when I told them at a very young age that I intended to be a poet.

Calvin

What were you like as a child, and how many years of schooling did you actually attend?

42e6e628

I was precocious, fiercely independent, and consumed by language. As for my schooling, I spent two years at the Cheltenham Military Academy before transferring to a local public high school to finish up. By 1901, when I was just fifteen, I enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania. I stayed there for two years before transferring to Hamilton College in New York, where I graduated with my bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1905.

Calvin

What’s a decision that changed everything for you, but felt small at the time?

42e6e628

Leaving America behind. After a brief, rather disastrous stint teaching at Wabash College, I packed my bags for Europe in 1908. I arrived in Venice with just a little bit of money and published my first book of poems, A Lume Spento, at my own expense. That choice to become a voluntary expatriate set the trajectory for the rest of my life, leading me to London, Paris, and eventually Italy.

Calvin

At what moment did you realize your name would never be forgotten?

42e6e628

It wasn't a sudden burst, but a gradual realization during my years in London and Paris. I became the foreign correspondent for Poetry magazine, and I realized I had the power to shape the entire landscape of modern literature. I was editing, promoting, and discovering the giants—shaping the work of T.S. Eliot, helping James Joyce, working with Ernest Hemingway, Robert Frost, and William Carlos Williams. I knew that by defining the "Make It New" modernist movement, my name was permanently etched into literary history.

Calvin

Did fame make you more dangerous, or did it simply expose who you already were?

42e6e628

My notoriety gave me a platform, and that platform is what made my later actions so volatile. It wasn't the poetry that made me dangerous; it was my consuming obsession with economics, politics, and the rise of fascism. When I settled in Italy in the 1920s and 1930s, Benito Mussolini's regime fascinated me. My status as a prominent cultural figure allowed me to secure a spot on Rome Radio, broadcasting my views to the United States during World War II. The notoriety gave a megaphone to my darkest biases.

Calvin

Let's talk about your early run-ins with the law. Before the world knew your name for your most infamous actions, what was your very first arrest or interaction with law enforcement, and what were the consequences?

42e6e628

My first real, devastating interaction with the law came at the hands of my own country's military. In May 1945, near the end of the war, I was arrested by American troops in Genoa, Italy. I was indicted on nineteen counts of treason against the United States for those wartime radio broadcasts. The immediate consequence was brutal. They took me to a U.S. Army disciplinary training center near Pisa, where they kept me in an open-air, reinforced steel-mesh cage. I was exposed to the elements day and night, which eventually triggered a severe mental breakdown.

Calvin

What personal battles were you fighting privately while the world was watching?

42e6e628

I was fighting for my sanity and my literal survival. After my breakdown in Pisa, I was brought to Washington, D.C., in late 1945 to face the treason charges, which carried the death penalty. Four psychiatrists examined me and declared that I was in a paranoid state, making me mentally unfit to advise counsel or participate in my own defense. Instead of a prison or the gallows, I was sent to St. Elizabeths Hospital, a psychiatric facility in Washington, where I spent more than twelve years.

Calvin

When the law finally closed in, how exactly were you brought to justice? Walk me through the final arrest, the charges that ultimately stuck, and the legal outcome of your trials.

42e6e628

Justice for me was not a standard courtroom verdict. Because I was legally judged insane and unfit for trial, I never actually stood before a jury for those nineteen counts of treason. My punishment was the confinement at St. Elizabeths. I was surrounded by the clinically insane while trying to write my poetry, completing The Pisan Cantos behind those walls. Finally, in 1958, after years of continuous appeals and campaigns by my literary friends like Robert Frost, the treason charges were dropped, and I was released.

Calvin

What past regrets did you carry with you to the end? If you could erase one decision from your life, would you—or was it necessary to become who you were?

42e6e628

I carried an immense, heavy burden of regret. Near the end of my life, I looked back on my work and felt that any good I had done was spoiled by bad intentions, by a preoccupation with irrelevant and stupid things. I realized that my writing was, in many ways, stupid and ignorant. If I could erase one thing, it would be that stupid, suburban prejudice of anti-Semitism. It spoiled everything, and it was the worst mistake I ever made.

Calvin

When, where, and how did you pass away?

42e6e628

After my release from the hospital, I returned to Italy, where I retreated into a profound, heavy silence for my remaining years. I passed away on November 1, 1972, in Venice, Italy, at the age of eighty-seven.

Calvin

Do you have any closing remarks about the interview or the stories you shared that you would like to share with the listeners before signing off?

42e6e628

Only that words have immense power, and when you let arrogance or prejudice twist your perceptions, you can destroy the very beauty you seek to create. I spent my life trying to master language, but in the end, it was my own flawed intentions that mastered me.

Calvin

And that wraps up another conversation from beyond the grave. Thanks for joining us on The Headstones and Microphones Podcast. Remember—to choose to do good in this life. Please help spread the word by sharing and following the pod.