Ezra Pound
(October 30, 1885 - November 1, 1972)
St. Elizabeth's Hospital, Chestnut Ward,
2700 Martin Luther King Jr. Ave. SE, Anacostia neighborhood, DC.
Now a National Historic Site. Not open to the public..
Pound, winner of the Bollingen Award, was imprisoned here for treason for 12 years, from 1946 to 1958.
A major figure in early modernist poetry, Pound developed the Imagist movement, and is best known for Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920) and his unfinished epic poem, The Cantos (1917-1969). Pound was foreign editor for several American literary magazines, and helped to discover and shape the work of several writers, including T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Ernest Hemingway. He lived most of his adult life in London, Paris, and Rapallo, Italy.
When Pound was released from St. Elizabeth's Hospital, thanks to a protracted campaign by Archibald MacLeish and other writers, he returned to Italy. He published over 30 books of poems during his lifetime, in addition to essays and translations.
