Word: pisan
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Pound." Mr. Pound at that moment was 1) in an insane asylum and 2) under indictment for high treason against the U.S. for serving Mussolini as an anti-Semitic propagandist in World War II. In addition, there were many who thought that the poetry in his prizewinning Pisan Cantos was not worth a damn, or an award either...
Poet Ezra Pound, 63, rheumy-eyed expatriate follower of Mussolini and fascism, now living out his days in a Washington, D.C. insane asylum (if he ever recovers, he will be tried for treason), won the Bollingen Prize of $1,000 for The Pisan Cantos (TIME, Oct. 25), "the highest achievement of American poetry" in 1948. The election committee, which includes Conrad Alken, W. H. Auden, T. S. Eliot, Robert Lowell and Katherine Anne Porter, "aware that objections may be made," explained their choice: "To permit other considerations than that of poetic achievement to sway the decision, would destroy the significance...
Ezra Pound, godfather-emeritus of modern verse, came through in his old age with some of the best-and worst-poetry of the year. In his Pisan Cantos he ranted, as of old, about usurers, Churchill and Mussolini; but a new, touching note of sadness and humility crept into his verse...
...eleven poems Pound wrote behind U.S. barbed wire have since become known as the "Pisan Cantos" and bring up the rear of his life work, The Cantos. The Cantos, now totaling 84, are a chaotic grab-bag in which the reader can find whatever he wishes, for Pound is both a poetic genius whose work influenced Eliot, Joyce and Yeats, and an intellectual crank who toadied to political cutthroats...
...Pull Down Thy Vanity." The "Pisan Cantos" continue in much the same vein as their predecessors; it's still the same old Ez. He still rants against the capitalists and remembers old friends-T. S. Eliot with acerbity, William Butler Yeats with fondness. At times, he is his old brash and raucous self, praising Benito and gleefully shouting...