Booth, Marcella Spann, 1932-

Ezra Pound, 1885-1972

Ezra Pound was born on October 30, 1885, in Hailey, Idaho. In 1889, the Pound family moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and in 1891 to Wyncote, Pennsylvania. In 1901, Pound enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania, but two years later transferred to Hamilton College where he received a bachelor’s degree in 1905. He returned to the University of Pennsylvania for graduate studies, which included studying abroad in Europe. After receiving a master of arts degree in Romance languages in 1907, Pound was appointed as a language instructor at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana.

In February 1908, Pound sailed to Europe to continue his study of medieval literature and to establish himself as a poet. After brief periods in Venice and France, Pound settled in London and published two collections of poetry, A Lume Spento (1908) and A Quinzaine for this Yule (1908). In London Pound met novelist Olivia Shakespear and was introduced to her daughter, Dorothy, whom he married on April 20, 1914. Influenced by Europe’s artistic and cultural rejuvenation, as well as his beginning interest in Eastern languages and culture, Pound developed a poetical style he termed Imagism, which was rooted in a broader artistic movement he called Vorticism.

The First World War made a lasting impact on Pound, and the death of friend and sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska contributed to a strong anti-war sentiment within him. In 1916, Pound published “Three Cantos” in Poetry . Between 1921 and 1924, Pound lived in Paris where he immersed himself in the city’s artistic milieu and continued working on the structure and style of his most ambitious, epic poem The Cantos, which he continued to revise and publish additional sequences for in various intervals for the remainder of his life. His relationship with American violinist Olga Rudge cultivated Pound’s interest in music, and he began to compose musical pieces that Rudge performed.

In 1924, Pound and Dorothy moved to Rapallo, Italy, where despite the distance, he continued his relationship with Rudge. On July 9, 1925, Rudge gave birth to their daughter, Mary. On September 10, 1926, Dorothy and Pound had a son, Omar. During the 1930s, Pound became an admirer of Mussolini and grew interested in the social and economic policies of Fascism, often writing about politics and economics. When Mussolini declared war on Britain and France in June 1940, Pound, believing that he and Mussolini shared a general anti-war sentiment, broadcast a series of addresses on Italian radio blaming the war on America, Great Britain, and Jews.

As a result of his broadcasts, the United States government charged Pound with treason in July 1943. He was arrested on May 2, 1945, and held in austere conditions at a Disciplinary Training Center near Pisa, Italy. While confined, Pound composed The Pisan Cantos (New Directions, 1948), which despite great controversy, won him the Bollingen Prize in 1949. In 1945, he was returned to the United States where he was indicted for treason. On February 13, 1946, he was declared mentally incompetent to stand trial and was sentenced to confinement at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital for the Insane in Washington, D.C. Over the course of Pound’s 12-year confinement, the poet often entertained friends and groups of poets, writers, and aspiring artists on the grounds of the hospital; one such visitor to “Ezuversity” was Marcella Spann. While at St. Elizabeth’s Pound continued writing, including additional sequences of The Cantos, and published several works.

Many influential supporters, T. S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, and Archibald MacLeish among them, petitioned the government for Pound’s release, and due in large part to poet Robert Frost’s successful campaign, Pound’s case was dismissed on April 18, 1958. He was released from St. Elizabeth’s on May 7, 1958, and after several days traveling in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, Ezra and Dorothy Pound, accompanied by Marcella Spann, departed for Italy. The small entourage sailed from New York on June 30, 1958, aboard the ocean liner Christoforo Colombo and arrived in Italy amid great publicity. The final destination was his daughter Mary and son-in-law Prince Boris de Rachewiltz’s Castle Brunnenburg near Merano, Italy. The climate and living arrangements at the castle proved difficult for Pound as tension among Dorothy, Rudge, Mary, and Spann grew. Spann returned to her native Texas in October 1959.

In his later years, Pound experienced declining health but continued writing and traveling until his death on November 1, 1972, in Venice, Italy.

Marcella Spann Booth, 1932-

Marcella Joyce Spann was born on June 21, 1932, in Aubrey, Texas. Three years after graduating from Frisco High School in 1949, she enrolled in East Texas State University in Commerce, Texas, where she received a B. A. in English in 1956 and an M. Ed. in personnel and guidance in August 1956. While Spann was in graduate school, Professor Vincent Miller introduced her to Ezra Pound’s poetry. Following graduation Spann and a friend arranged to live in New York for a year, and Spann wrote to Pound at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital and requested to meet him while on a stopover in Washington D.C. The poet, who often received young aspiring artists on the grounds of St. Elizabeth’s, wrote back granting her access.

While she was living in New York, Spann and Pound continued their correspondence. He proceeded to enrich her life by imparting his philosophy of life and literature, often assigning Spann various readings and writing tasks in his letters. Pound frequently included fragments of poetry in his letters and increasingly asked Spann to complete various secretarial tasks on his behalf. In 1957, Spann was hired as an English instructor at Marjorie Webster Junior College located in Washington D.C., allowing her to have regular visits with Pound. During one of these visits, Spann confided to Pound her feelings of self-doubt about teaching, and he conjured the idea of the “Spannthology,” an introductory poetry textbook for Spann’s students. Pound selected the poets he thought necessary to include, and Spann selected the poems. The book was later published as Confucius to Cummings: An Anthology of Poetry (New Directions, 1964). During her frequent visits to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital between 1957 and 1958, Spann often shared her students’ work with Pound who provided comments and advice for her teaching. After Pound’s release from St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in 1958, Spann accompanied him and his wife, Dorothy, to Italy where she acted as Pound’s secretary and continued work on the “Spannthology.” Pound and Spann continued to correspond briefly after she returned to Texas in October 1959.

Between 1960 and 1965 Spann taught English at Seagoville Junior High School in Seagoville, Texas, and was a guidance counselor at Sam Houston Junior High School in Garland, Texas. She enrolled in the doctoral program at The University of Texas at Austin in 1965 and received a Ph. D. in English in August 1969. Her dissertation, entitled “An Analytical and Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts and Letters in the Louis Zukofsky Collection at The University of Texas at Austin,” brought her into contact with the poet Louis Zukofsky. In 1969 she received an appointment to the English department at the University of Connecticut at Storrs, where she taught literature, including a course on Pound’s Cantos . She married a colleague, economics professor E. J. R. (Ted) Booth, in June 1972. A scholar of modern literature, Spann Booth attended Pound symposia across the world and published two articles about Pound in Paideuma, a journal dedicated to the study of Ezra Pound and his works.

From the guide to the Marcella Spann Booth Collection of Ezra Pound, 1886-2007 (bulk 1956-1970), (The University of Texas at Austin, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center)