SOURCE: Tuma, Keith. “Ezra Pound, Progressive.” Paideuma 19, no. 1-2 (spring-fall 1990): 77-92.

In the following essay, Tuma attempts to trace the roots of Pound's later political course by analyzing Pound's 1912 essay Patria Mia, a cultural critique of Pound's belief that a forthcoming American renaissance was approaching.

There has been rather a lot written lately on Ezra Pound's politics, a good part of it concerned with Pound's fascism.¹ Somehow Pound's work still can summon a rhetoric of urgency and embattled desperation. His canonical status provides ample ammunition for those political critics who wish to fire away at the skeletons of the New Criticism. But beyond the role Pound has played in the now ancient revolt against New Criticism, which has been repeatedly castigated for its conservatism, there has been remarkably little discussion of Pound within the context of American politics. Larger questions of ideology, intention, poetry and politics, and so...