SOURCE: Wilhelm, J. J. “From Rock Drill (Cantos 85-95) to Deliverance (1955-1958).” In Ezra Pound: The Tragic Years (1925-1972), pp. 294-311. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994.

In the following essay, Wilhelm analyzes some of Pound's later poetic outputs from the 1950s and the efforts to free him from St. Elizabeths Hospital.

This would be a good year to release poets

—Ernest Hemingway in 1954 shortly after receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature

By 1955, everyone interested in serious literature was curious about the nature of the ensuing cantos, because the rumor was already out that Ezra Pound was working on them, despite the efforts of Dr. Overholser to play the subject down. When Section: Rock-Drill was published by Vanni Scheiwiller in Milan in September (the New Directions publication followed in 1956 and the Faber in 1957), readers were somewhat surprised by the reversion to a pre-Pisan form. The first-person sufferer at...