Editing Ezra Pound (section)

===St. Elizabeths Hospital===
{{further|Visits to St. Elizabeths}}
[[File:Center building at Saint Elizabeths, August 23, 2006.jpg|thumb|left|upright=1.2|alt=photograph|[[St. Elizabeths Hospital]] Center Building, [[Anacostia]], Washington, D.C., 2006]]

Pound arrived back in Washington, D.C., on 18 November 1945, two days before the start of the [[Nuremberg trials]].<ref>Tytell (1987), 284</ref> Lt. Col. P. V. Holder, one of the escorting officers, wrote in an affidavit that Pound was "an intellectual 'crackpot{{'"}} who intended to conduct his own defense.<ref>Kimpel and Eaves (1981), 475–476</ref> Dorothy would not allow it; Pound wrote in a letter: "Tell [[Omar Pound|Omar]] I favour a defender who has written a life of [[John Adams|J. Adams]] and translated [[Confucius]]. Otherwise how CAN he know what it is about?"<ref>Pound and Spoo (1999), 19–20; Moody (2015), 127</ref>

He was arraigned on 27 November on charges of treason,{{efn|The 19 counts consisted of broadcasts that had been witnessed by two technicians; the charge was that Pound had violated his allegiance to the United States by unlawfully supporting the Kingdom of Italy.<ref>Tytell (1987), 286–287</ref>}} and on 4 December he was placed in a locked room in the psychiatric ward of [[Gallinger Hospital]].<ref>Moody (2015), 185</ref> Three court-appointed psychiatrists, including [[Winfred Overholser]], superintendent of [[St. Elizabeths Hospital]], decided that he was mentally unfit to stand trial. They found him "abnormally [[Grandiosity|grandiose]]&nbsp;... expansive and exuberant in manner, exhibiting [[pressure of speech]], [[Repetition (rhetorical device)|discursiveness]] and [[Distraction|distractibility]]."<ref>Moody (2015), 177–178</ref> A fourth psychiatrist appointed by Pound's lawyer initially thought he was a [[Psychopathy|psychopath]], which would have made him fit to stand trial.<ref>Torrey (1992), 193 and 317, n.&nbsp;54, citing "FBI interview with Dr. Wendell Muncie, February 20, 1956, in the FBI file on Pound"; Moody (2015), 179</ref>

On 21 December 1945, as case no. 58,102, he was transferred to Howard Hall, St. Elizabeths' maximum security ward, where he was held in a single cell with peepholes.<ref>Moody (2015), 192</ref> Visitors were admitted to the waiting room for 15 minutes at a time, while patients wandered around screaming.<ref>Tytell (1987), 294; Moody (2015), 194</ref> A hearing on 13 February 1946 concluded that he was of "unsound mind"; he shouted in court: "I never did believe in Fascism, God damn it; I am opposed to Fascism."<ref>Moody (2015), 213.</ref> Pound's lawyer, [[Julien Cornell]], requested his release at a hearing in January 1947.<ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/1994/12/07/obituaries/julien-cornell-83-the-defense-lawyer-in-ezra-pound-case.html "Julien Cornell, 83, The Defense Lawyer In Ezra Pound Case"]. ''The New York Times'', 7 December 1994; Moody (2015), 242</ref> As a compromise, Overholser moved him to the more comfortable Cedar Ward on the third floor of the east wing of St. Elizabeths' Center Building.<ref>Moody (2015), 244, 246; Swift (2017), 79</ref> In early 1948 he was moved again, this time to a larger room in Chestnut Ward.<ref>Moody (2015), 247</ref>

Tytell writes that Pound was in his element in Chestnut Ward.<ref name=Tytell302/> At last provided for, he was allowed to read, write, and receive visitors, including Dorothy for several hours a day.<ref name=Tytell1987p309/> (In October 1946 Dorothy had been placed in charge of his "person and property".)<ref>Moody (2015), 234</ref> His room had a typewriter, floor-to-ceiling book shelves, and bits of paper hanging on string from the ceiling with ideas for ''The Cantos''.<ref name=Tytell302/> He had turned a small alcove on the ward into his living room, where he entertained friends and literary figures.<ref name=Tytell1987p309>Tytell (1987), 309</ref>{{efn|Visitors included [[Conrad Aiken]], [[Elizabeth Bishop]], [[E. E. Cummings]], [[Guy Davenport]], [[T. S. Eliot]], [[Achilles Fang]], [[Edith Hamilton]], [[Hugh Kenner]], [[Robert Lowell]], [[Archibald MacLeish]], [[Marshall McLuhan]], [[H. L. Mencken]], [[Marianne Moore]], [[Norman Holmes Pearson]], [[Allen Tate]], [[Stephen Spender]], and [[William Carlos Williams]].<ref>Tytell (1987), 299–300; Torrey (1992), 219</ref>}} It reached the point where he refused to discuss any attempt to have him released.<ref>Kutler (1982), 81; Tytell (1987), 305</ref>