SOURCE: Young, Kevin. “Visiting St. Elizabeths: Ezra Pound, Impersonation, and the Mask of the Modern Poet.” In Ezra Pound and African American Modernism, edited by Michael Coyle, pp. 185-204. Orono, Maine: National Poetry Foundation, 2001.

In the following essay, Young relates Pound's transitional sense of both Modernism and the artistic ‘mask’ to that of the African American writing experience.

Ezra Pound's poetic career—an oxymoron of a term which, before him, was somewhat unimaginable—can be characterized by the very titles of the various literary magazines he edited, hustled for and hawked. From simple Poetry to The Egoist to The Exile, Pound progressed and regressed, along the way founding more “isms” than a political party. Indeed, Pound is all too often read as a self-contained rally: one man whose many voices surround one sure cause, whether Modernism or fascism or some (im)potent combination of the two. Unrepentant genius...