Editing Ezra Pound (section)

===Legacy===
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A little light, like a [[rushlight]]
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Much of Pound's legacy lies in his advancement of some of the best-known modernist writers of the early 20th century, particularly between 1910 and 1925.<ref name=Menand2008>[https://archive.today/20141003035358/http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/06/09/the-pound-error Menand (2008)]; [https://archive.today/20190903045718/https://www.nytimes.com/1972/11/02/archives/ezra-pound-a-man-of-contradictions.html Montgomery (1972)]</ref> In addition to Eliot, Joyce, Lewis, Frost, Williams, Hemingway, H.D., Aldington, and Aiken, he befriended and helped Cummings, Bunting, Ford, [[Marianne Moore]], [[Louis Zukofsky]], [[Jacob Epstein]], [[Margaret C. Anderson|Margaret Anderson]], [[George Oppen]], and [[Charles Olson]].<ref>Bornstein (2001), 22–23; [https://archive.today/20141003035358/http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/06/09/the-pound-error Menand (2008)]</ref>

[[File:Hieratic Head of Ezra Pound 01 (brightened).jpg|thumb|upright|Ezra Pound in marble by [[Henri Gaudier-Brzeska]] (1914)]]

Beyond this, his legacy is mixed. He was a strong lyricist with an "ear" for words;<ref>Ingham (2001), 236–237</ref> his ''Times'' obituary said he had a "faultless sense of [[cadence]]".<ref name=LondonTimesobit/> According to [[Ira Nadel]], he "overturned poetic meter, literary style, and the state of the long poem". Nadel cited the importance of Pound's editing of ''The Waste Land'', the publication of ''Ulysses'', and his role in developing of Imagism.<ref name=Nadel2005pix>Nadel (2005), ix</ref> Hugh Witemeyer argued that Imagism was "probably the most important single movement" in 20th-century English-language poetry, because it affected all the leading poets of Pound's generation and the two generations after him.<ref>Witemeyer (2001), 48</ref> According to [[Hugh Kenner]] in 1951, although no great contemporary writer was less read than Pound, there was no one who could "over and over again appeal more surely, through sheer beauty of language" to people who would otherwise rather talk about poets than read them.<ref>Kenner (1951), 16</ref>

Against this, [[Robert Conquest]] argued in 1979 that critics were responsible for having promoted Pound despite his "minimal talent", which was "grossly exaggerated".<ref>Conquest (1979), 236</ref> "This is an accusation less against the fantastic arrogance of Pound", he wrote, "than against the narrow-minded obscurantism of the departments of English and the critical establishment who have set up a system of apologetics which the slyest Jesuit of the seventeenth century would have baulked at."<ref>Conquest (1979), 243</ref> According to [[Samuel Putnam]], those who respected Pound's poetry were less likely to respect his prose or work as a critic.<ref>Putnam (1947), 141</ref>

The outrage over his collaboration with the [[Axis powers]] was so deep that it dominated the discussion. "A greater calamity cannot befall the art", [[Arthur Miller]] wrote in December 1945, "than that Ezra Pound, the Mussolini mouthpiece, should be welcomed back as an arbiter of American letters&nbsp;..."<ref>Bigsby (2009), 252</ref> Over the decades, according to Redman, critics argued that Pound was not really a poet or not really a fascist, or that he was a fascist but his poetry is not fascistic, or that there was an evil Pound and a good Pound.<ref>Redman (1991), 2–3</ref> The American poet [[Elizabeth Bishop]], 1956 [[Pulitzer Prize in Poetry|Pulitzer Prize]] winner and one of his hospital visitors—Pound called her "Liz Bish"—reflected the ambivalence in her poem "[[Visits to St. Elizabeths]]" (1957).<ref>Moody (2015), 251; Swift (2017), 14–15</ref> "This is the time / of the tragic man / that lies in the house of Bedlam." As the poem progresses, the tragic man, never named, becomes the talkative man; the honored man; the old, brave man; the cranky man; the cruel man; the busy man; the tedious man; the poet, the man; and, finally, the wretched man.<ref>{{cite web| url = https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53008/visits-to-st-elizabeths| title = Bishop (1957)| date = 18 April 2022}}</ref>
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