In 1949, poetry was a major issue in the public arena. Ezra Pound, one of the most famous and best-respected English-language poets in the world, was languishing in a Washington, D.C., mental hospital, having been found mentally unfit to stand trial on treason charges. During World War II, Pound had made broadcasts on Italian state radio, and many people felt that this was a treasonous act. (Pound argued that the content of his broadcasts was never determined by the Fascist authorities.) Disgraced, depressed, and shamed, Pound seemed to have departed the public eye, perhaps for good.

But that year, Pound published the latest installment of his long poem, The Cantos. This book, called The Pisan Cantos because much of it had been written while Pound was incarcerated in an Army detention camp in Pisa, Italy, won the first Bollingen Prize for Poetry, an award sponsored by...