American poet Ezra Pound (1885–1972) was among the most influential literary figures of the twentieth century. As a poet, he founded the Imagist movement (c. 1909–17), which advocated the use of precise, concrete images in a free-verse setting. As an editor, he fostered the careers of William Butler Yeats, T. S. Eliot, and Robert Frost. As a force in the literary world, he championed James Joyce and Wyndham Lewis. Pound also helped to create a modern movement in poetry in which, in T. S. Eliot's words, "English and American poets collaborated, knew each other's works, and influenced each other."<br>Long an expatriate, Pound's questionable political activities during World War II distracted many from the value of his literary work. Nevertheless, his status as a major American poet has never been in doubt, as this choice collection of fifty-seven early poems amply proves. Here are poems — including a number not found in other anthologies — from <i>Personae</i> (1909), <i>Exultations</i> (1909), <i>Ripostes</i> (1912), and <i>Cathay</i> (1915) as well as selections from his major sequence "Hugh Selwyn Mauberley" (1920).<br> Read Less