Editing Ezra Pound (section)

==Early life and education (1885–1908)==
===Family background===
{{see also|Homer Pound House}}
[[File:Thaddeus C. Pound - Brady-Handy.jpg|thumb|upright=0.9|alt=photograph|[[Thaddeus C. Pound|Thaddeus Coleman Pound]], Pound's paternal grandfather, in the late 1880s]]
Pound was born in 1885 in a two-story [[clapboard]] house in [[Hailey, Idaho|Hailey]], Idaho Territory, the only child of Homer Loomis Pound and Isabel Weston,<ref name=house/> who married in 1884.<ref name=Moody2007pxiii/> Homer had worked in Hailey since 1883 as registrar of the [[United States General Land Office]].<ref name=house>Moody (2007), 4; Wilson (2014), 14{{pb}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Ridler |first1=Keith |title=Poet's Idaho home is reborn |url=http://seattletimes.com/html/travel/2004430400_tridahopoet25.html |work=Seattle Times |agency=Associated Press |date=25 May 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140305185833/http://seattletimes.com/html/travel/2004430400_tridahopoet25.html |archive-date=5 March 2014 |url-status=dead}}</ref> Pound's grandfather, [[Thaddeus C. Pound|Thaddeus Coleman Pound]], a [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican]] Congressman and the 10th [[List of lieutenant governors of Wisconsin|Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin]], had secured him the appointment. Homer had previously worked for Thaddeus in the lumber business.<ref name=":0">Kavka (1991), 145–148; Moody (2007), 4</ref>

Both sides of Pound's family emigrated from England in the 17th century. On his father's side, the immigrant ancestor was John Pound, a [[Quaker]] who arrived from England around 1650.<ref name=Moody2007pxiii/> Ezra's paternal grandmother, [[Loomis Homestead|Susan Angevine Loomis]],<ref>Wilhelm (1985a), 14; Wilhelm (1985b), 380; Kavka (1991), 145–146</ref> married Thaddeus Coleman Pound.<ref name=":0"/> On his mother's side, Pound was descended from [[William Wadsworth (patriarch)|William Wadsworth]], a [[Puritanism|Puritan]] who immigrated to [[Boston]] on the ''[[English ship Lion (1557)|Lion]]'' in 1632. Captain Joseph Wadsworth helped to write the [[Fundamental Orders of Connecticut|first Connecticut constitution]].<ref>Tytell (1987), 11</ref> The Wadsworths married into the Westons of New York; Harding Weston and Mary Parker were Pound's maternal grandparents.<ref name=Moody2007pxiii>Moody (2007), xiii</ref> After serving in the military, Harding remained unemployed, so his brother Ezra Weston and Ezra's wife, Frances Amelia Wessells Freer (Aunt Frank), helped to look after Isabel, Pound's mother.<ref>Cockram (2005), 238; for Aunt Frank's name, Wallace (2010), 205</ref>

===Early education===
[[File:Ezra Pound and Isabel Pound (cropped).jpg|thumb|upright=0.9|left|alt=photograph|In his Cheltenham Military Academy uniform with his mother, 1898]]

Isabel Pound was unhappy in Hailey and took Ezra with her to New York in 1887 when he was 18 months old.<ref>Cockram (2005), 239; Moody (2007), 4.</ref> Her husband followed and found a job as an [[Metallurgical assay|assayer]] at the [[Philadelphia Mint]]. After a move to 417 Walnut Street in [[Jenkintown, Pennsylvania]], the family bought a six-bedroom house in 1893 at 166 Fernbrook Avenue, [[Wyncote, Pennsylvania|Wyncote]].<ref name=Moody2007pxiii/> Pound's education began in [[dame school]]s: Miss Elliott's school in Jenkintown in 1892 and the Heathcock family's Chelten Hills School in Wyncote in 1893.<ref name=Moody2007pxiii/> Known as "Ra" (pronounced "Ray"), he attended Wyncote Public School from September 1894.<ref>Carpenter (1988), 26–27.</ref> His first publication was on 7 November 1896 in the ''Jenkintown Times-Chronicle'' ("by E.&nbsp;L.&nbsp;Pound, Wyncote, aged 11 years"), a [[Limerick (poetry)|limerick]] about [[William Jennings Bryan]], who had just lost the [[1896 United States presidential election|1896 presidential election]].{{efn|"There was a young man from the West,&nbsp;/ He did what he could for what he thought best;&nbsp;/ But election came round;&nbsp;/ He found himself drowned,&nbsp;/ And the papers will tell you the rest."<ref>Carpenter (1988), 36.</ref>}}

In 1897, aged 12, he transferred to Cheltenham Military Academy (CMA), where he wore an [[American Civil War|American Civil War-style]] uniform and was taught drilling and how to shoot.<ref>Carpenter (1988), 30.</ref> The following year he made his first trip overseas, a three-month tour with his mother and Aunt Frank, who took him to England, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, and Morocco.<ref>Carpenter (1988), 32–33; Moody (2007), 10.</ref> He attended CMA until 1900, at times as a boarder, but it seems he did not graduate.<ref>Carpenter (1988), 30, 33–34.</ref>{{efn|Pound may have attended [[Cheltenham Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania|Cheltenham Township]] High School for the year 1900–1901.<ref>McDonald (2005), 91.</ref>}}

===University===
[[File:Hilda Doolittle, 1921 (cropped).jpg|thumb|alt=photograph|[[H.D.|Hilda Doolittle (H.D.)]], {{Circa|1921}}]]
In 1901, at 15 years old, Pound was admitted to the College of Liberal Arts at the [[University of Pennsylvania]] in [[Philadelphia]].<ref>Moody (2007), 14; Carpenter (1988), 35</ref> Years later he said his aim was to avoid drill at the military academy.<ref>{{cite web |url = http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4598/the-art-of-poetry-no-5-ezra-pound |title = Hall (1962) |archive-url=https://archive.today/20130416003348/http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4598/the-art-of-poetry-no-5-ezra-pound |archive-date=16 April 2013 |url-status=dead}}</ref> His one distinction in first year was in geometry,<ref>Carpenter (1988), 37</ref> but otherwise his grades were mostly poor, including in Latin, his major; he achieved a B in English composition and a pass in English literature.<ref>Moody (2007), 15–16</ref> In his second year he switched from the degree course to "non-degree special student status", he said "to avoid irrelevant subjects".<ref>Moody (2007), 14, 15</ref>{{efn|In "How I Began", ''[[T. P. O'Connor|T.P.'s Weekly]]'' (6 June 1913), Pound wrote: "I resolved that at thirty I would know more about poetry than any man living, that I would know the dynamic content from the shell, that I would know what was accounted poetry everywhere, what part of poetry was 'indestructible', what part could ''not be lost'' by translation and—scarcely less important—what effects were obtainable in ''one'' language only and were utterly incapable of being translated.{{pb}}"In this search I learned more or less of nine languages, I read Oriental stuff in translations, I fought every University regulation and every professor who tried to make me learn anything except this, or who bothered me with 'requirements for degrees'."<ref>Pound (1974), 24–25</ref>}} He was not elected to a [[Fraternities and sororities|fraternity]] at Penn, but it seemed not to bother him.<ref>Carpenter (1988), 39</ref>

His parents and Aunt Frank took him on another three-month European tour in 1902, and the following year he transferred to [[Hamilton College (New York)|Hamilton College]] in [[Clinton, Oneida County, New York|Clinton, New York]], possibly because of his grades.<ref name=Moody2007p20>Moody (2007), 20</ref> Again he was not invited to join a fraternity, but this time he had hoped to do so, according to letters home, because he wanted to live in a [[fraternity house]], and by April 1904 he regarded the move as a mistake.<ref>Carpenter (1988), 47</ref> Signed up for the Latin–Scientific course, he appears to have avoided some classes; his transcript is short of credits.<ref name=Moody2007p20/> He studied the [[Provençal dialect]] and read [[Dante Alighieri|Dante]] and [[Anglo-Saxon poetry]], including ''[[Beowulf]]'' and the 8th-century [[Old English literature|Old English]] poem ''[[The Seafarer (poem)|The Seafarer]]''.<ref>Moody (2007), 21, 23–24</ref>

After graduating from Hamilton in 1905 with a [[Bachelor of Philosophy|PhB]], he returned to Penn, where he fell in love with Hilda Doolittle (who later wrote under the name "[[H.D.]]"). She was then a student at [[Bryn Mawr College]], and he hand-bound 25 of his poems for her, calling it ''Hilda's Book''.<ref>Doolittle (1979), 67–68; Tytell (1987), 24–27</ref> After receiving his MA in [[Romance languages]] in 1906, he registered to write a PhD thesis on the [[Gracioso|jesters]] in [[Lope de Vega]]'s plays; a two-year Harrison fellowship covered his tuition and a $500 grant, with which he sailed again to Europe.<ref>Moody (2007), 19, 28; Tytell (1987), 30; for the announcement of a fellowship to Ezra Weston Pound, see "Old Penn gives out honor list". ''The Philadelphia Inquirer'', 10 June 1906, 2</ref> He spent three weeks in Madrid in various libraries, including in the [[Royal Palace of Madrid#Royal Library|Royal Library]]. On 31 May 1906 he was standing outside the palace during the [[Morral affair|attempted assassination]] of [[Alfonso XIII of Spain|King Alfonso]] and left the city for fear of being mistaken for an anarchist.<ref>Moody (2007), 28</ref> After Spain he visited Paris and London, returning to the United States in July 1906.<ref>Moody (2007), 29</ref> His first essay, "Raphaelite Latin", was published in the ''Book News Monthly'' that September.<ref>"September Magazines". ''Reading Times'', 11 September 1906, 4; Moody (2007), 31; Slatin (1955), 75</ref> He took courses in English in 1907, where he fell out with just about everyone, including the department head, [[Felix Emanuel Schelling|Felix Schelling]], with silly remarks during lectures and by winding an enormous tin watch very slowly while Schelling spoke.<ref>Moody (2007), 29–30</ref><!--Carpenter 1988, 37, places the watch incident during Pound's undergraduate years.--> In the spring of 1907 he learned that his fellowship would not be renewed.<ref name=Tytell1987p30>Tytell (1987), 30</ref> Schelling told him he was wasting everyone's time, and he left without finishing his doctorate.<ref>Moody (2007), 30</ref>

===Teaching===
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 | quote=<poem>I am homesick after mine own kind,
Oh I know that there are folk about me, friendly faces,
But I am homesick after mine own kind.
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 | source= —&nbsp;''Personae of Ezra Pound'' (1909)<ref>Pound (1909), 40</ref><br />written in Crawfordsville, Indiana, 1907<ref>Carpenter (1988), 78; Moody (2007), 90</ref>
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From September 1907 Pound taught French and Spanish at [[Wabash College]],<ref>"Professor Pound goes to Wabash". ''The Indianapolis News'', 9 August 1907, 11.</ref> a [[Presbyterian]] college with 345 students in [[Crawfordsville, Indiana]],<ref>Carpenter (1988), 71–73; Moody (2007), 56</ref> which he called "the [[Inferno (Dante)#Sixth Circle (Heresy)|sixth circle of hell]]".<ref>Moody (2007), 59</ref> One former student remembered him as a breath of fresh air; another said he was "exhibitionist, egotistic, self-centered and self-indulgent".<ref>Carpenter (1988), 74</ref>

He was dismissed after a few months. Smoking was forbidden, but he would smoke [[cigarillo]]s in his room in the same corridor as the president's office.<ref>Moody (2007), 58</ref> He was asked to leave the college in January 1908 when his landladies, Ida and Belle Hall, found a woman in his room.<ref>Tytell (1987), 34; Carpenter (1988), 80–81; Moody (2007), 60–61</ref> Shocked at having been expelled,<ref>Tytell (1987), 34</ref> he left for Europe soon after, sailing from New York in March on the [[RMS Slavonia|RMS ''Slavonia'']].<ref>Carpenter (1988), 83; Moody (2007), 62</ref>