A David Moody 

Ezra Pound Poet: III: The Tragic Years, 1939-1972.

Oxford: Oxford UP, 2015.

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This third and final volume of A. David Moody's critical life of Ezra Pound presents Pound's personal tragedy in a tragic time. In this concluding volume, we experience the 1939-1945 World War, and Pound's hubristic involvement in Fascist Italy's part in it; we encounter the grave moral and intellectual error of Pound holding the Jewish race responsible for the war; and his consequent downfall, being charged with treason, condemned as an anti-Semite, and shut up for twelve years in an institution for the insane. Further, we see Pound stripped for life, by his own counsel and wife, of his civil and human rights.

Pound endured what was inflicted upon him, justly and unjustly, without complaint; and continued his lifetime's effort to promote, in and through his Cantos and his translations, a consciousness of a possible humane and just social order. The contradictions run deep and compel, as tragedy does, a steady and unprejudiced contemplation and an answering depth of comprehension.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART ONE: 1939 - 1945

Between Paradise & Propaganda: 1939-40

A Dutifully Dissident Exile, 1941

In a Web of Contradictions: 1942-43

'To Dream the Republic': 1943-44

For the Resurrection of Italy: 1944-45

PART TWO: 1945

Talking to the FBI

A Prisoner in the Eyes of Others

'In the mind indestructible': The Pisan Cantos

PART THREE

American Justice

Giving Cornell his head - Lunacy at St. Elizabeths

PART FOUR: ST ELIZABETHS 1946 - 1958

A Year in the Hell Hole

Resilience: 1947 - 50

Histrionics - 'a awful lot of company' - No release - Thrown to wolves - Courage against cowardice

The Life of the Mind: 1950 - 55

'Indictment Dismissed': 1956-58

Clearing Out

PART FIVE: 1958 - 1972

A Final Testament: 1958 - 59

'You Find Me In Fragments': 1959 - 62

His Sickness & His Wealth: 1962 - 64

Afterlife of the Poet: 1965 - 1972

APPENDIX

The Settlement of the Estate

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