SOURCE: Stock, Noel. “Some Dangers of Literary Biography.” In Poet in Exile, pp. 121-29. New York: Barnes and Noble, Inc., 1964.

In the following essay, Stock warns that the literary biographer's standard approach to analysis—to explore an author's letters, essays, and other related materials to gain insight into his writing—may not provide accurate critical insight into Pound's poetry.

There was an immense amount of purely prosodic training and general preparation that went into the production of Ezra Pound's verse. His maturity as a poet occurred, it will be noted, about 1920, when he was thirty-five years old; and up to this time his work holds together as an unmistakable unity, despite possible flaws or shortcomings. Of the poetry and prose up to 1920 it is possible to say that it makes sense both on and below the surface, and there is no need for us to go hunting for...