Ezra Pound
“He makes even less sense than me, only he doesn't even have a sense of humour. Meldundleize I don't liek hyphens Mrkgnao lulz”
Ezra Pound (b. February 7 1884 - d. June 9, 1969) was born February 7th, 1884 in Terrified Alienation, Ohio. He was considered by Ezra Pound to be one of the greatest poets of the 20th century. He was also kind of a dick. It is reasonable to assume based on the obscurity of his poetry, his use of poetry to converse with dead people, and his confident support of the fascist movement in Italy that he was a crazy crazy crazyperson.
An Unfunny Childhood[edit]
Pound's childhood is shrouded in mystery. He later claimed that by the age of five, he had read all of Aristotle, Henry James, and Stephen King despite the fact that Stephen King had not been born yet. In an essay he published years later, "On Goodnight Moon", he ruthlessly attacks children's literature for its artless simple-mindedness:
- There surely can be no pleasure from reading such drivel, I am sure of it. For in life we read so many books that are unnecessary and impart upon us next to nothing. I say that we must purge all of it, and instead feed the growing intellect of the child with Sophocles and Pirandello. Man, if I wasn't me I'd wanna fuck me.
Poetry[edit]
Cockblocked into destitution and corrupted by methamphetamines in college, Pound was sure there was no hope for him until he met his muse in a fellow student named HD ("Hot Dog"). Together with his new lover he published his first book of poetry, Hot Dog Water. He moved to the Europe with HD in the hopes of finding someone that would not want to punch him two minutes into conversation. After many years of sucking W. B. Yeats's cock (it's a little known fact Yeats was a famed chickenfarmer before he became a poet), Pound became a reasonably well known cereal box author. While in Europe, Pound published three volumes of poetry: PB & J: An Amalgamation, Il Canzone di Kool Aid Guy, and Confusing Allusions That Don't Make Sense. What's more, he distinguished himself for his translations of Chinese poetry and the Confucian analects, compiled near as death as The Zippadee DooDa of Ezra Pound. Pound's translation seem all the more remarkable when one considers the fact that he did not actually know how to read Chinese. Scholars speculate that Pound's translations were made possible by his close readings of other translations, as well as his proclivity towards being pretentious and kind of full of shit. Scholars speculate that rolling his r's when reciting his work, was another by-product of being really fucking pretentious, but none of them are sure. Nevertheless, Pound's translations are startlingly close to the original Chinese; Pound did take some liberties with the material, however, incorporating elements of Greek Tragedy, Noh Theater, Native American Wisdom, and Frosty the Snowman into the translations. Here is a particularly beautiful excerpt from Book 3 of The Zippadee DooDa:
- And Angelina said unto Brad:
- "Per aspera ad astra."
- There hath no weeping in that.
- And leaving him found a child-
- Vietnamese, they call it.
- Kun Kuo's his benefactor,
- Him of the big gay scarf
- Mountain clouds around he
- Swirling in their vanity,
- To release a fart, high gentle
- In Calypso's ears. And so then
- Salma Hayek intoned a reply:
- "No me gustan sus cabras."
- And the petting zoo did close. cheese......./......... not everything is true on this
His most famous poem, he read to his fans on radio in 1942:
- You let in the Jew and the Jew rotted your empire,
- And you yourselves out-jewed the Jew ...
- And the big Jew has rotted EVERY nation he has wormed into.
Mel Gibson cherishes the poem and knows the poem by heart and has recited it often in public, including to a police officer and in several interviews.
Racist Pig[edit]
Pound was cruelly persecuted by America for making anti-semitic comments on Italian radio. At the time, he was Benito Mussolini's butt buddy, and was apparently very charismatic. It was maybe the dumbest thing he ever did. He was captured by the FBI and stuff and got a spankin. He spent a few years in an asylum and probably actually went insane during the time he was there, having been just a racist, homophobic satanist pig when he made the broadcasts, rather than having made them in a state of insanity. As part of his punishment in the asylum, he was brutally raped by animals almost every single day.
Pound was released from the asylum only a week after he was thrown in it, but he voluntarily stayed in it anyway for five years. After he left the aslyum he was not the same. He ate hay and mooed. He frequently asked to be milked, a request that deeply disturbed his lifelong partner William Shakespeare. A decade later, Pound eloquently spoke at length to Allen Ginsberg of his remorse over the mistake of making the fascist broadcasts:
“Whoopsie Daisie I maed a nono.”
Ezra Pound died a sad, lonely, tweaked-out old man, on a bus bound for Memphis. He died halfway through the trip, having realized he had forgotten his six-string razor, consequently having a panic attack and throwing himself out a window.
Hey look a chinese character 无[edit]
Pound's acclaimed Cereal Box Poems are not necessarily his biggest claim to fame- he wrote the original version of "Auld Lang Syne", though the original version he wrote that is not usually sung is 50 lines longer, containing extensive passages written in Latin and lyrics about Confucius and Benjamin Franklin. He was also ardent promoter of the work of Robert Frost, Ernest Hemingway, and Dave Matthews Band, among others.
Pound and Hemingway's friendship was struck a fatal blow when Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ricky Gervais broke an expensive tea-cup in his house. Pound apparently threw them out of his house shrieking that they were all "traitorous vampiric locutioners". However, when Pound was turned over to the authorities for his radio broadcasts made in praise of the fascist movement taking hold of Italy, Hemingway eloquently defended Pound:
“Wait a minute...maybe don't kill him.”
Pound is generally considered the most readable of the modern poets. Most people would agree that he was not pointlessly obscure or frustratingly difficult to understand for no reason, taking the simplest idea and turning it into an impenetrably complex gnomic statement. Those people are in the minority, honestly. Seriously. He was also an early advocate of the Gnome Rights movement, along with his sometime lover Gnome Chomsky. He was the major progenitor in 20th Century Literature of Modernism, Imagism, Vorticism, Latitudinarianism, Psychopannychism, Horticulturism, and Aneurysm. He was a true American Hero.
See also...