Ezra Pound: The Solitary Volcano

Unlike other biographical portraits of Ezra Pound, John Tytell's brilliant and ambitious work offers an interpretive study that boldly confronts the emotional truths and psychological drama that formed this complex and controversial American poet. Neither an apology nor a condemnation, it presents instead a meticulous exploration into the mind and vision of a man who galvanized a generation and challenged an entire literary and world establishment. Although he enjoyed little fame in his lifetime, Pound's notoriety and influence were enormous, as he arrogantly slashed away at convention and almost single-handedly brought about the twentieth-century revolution in poetry known as modernism. Ultimately, outrage and scandal turned his art to madness, and Pound's last years saw him fall tragically silent. "The best and most balanced critical biography of Ezra Pound Tytell maintains a striking balance between the rambunctious man and the gifted poet and tells his story not as an act of judgment but as a searching inquiry into the madness of art." Leon Edel "A fascinating figure and Tytell has written a fascinating book...a vivid, sensitive portrait that will go a good way toward clarifying, for all of us, the enigma that was Pound." Washington Post Book World "Exhaustively researched and admirably balanced....[Tytell] has produced an important and a valuable study of literary modernism and its infamous 'midwife.'" Cleveland Plain Dealer