The Bughouse The Poetry, Politics, and Madness of Ezra Pound [Paperback]

In 1945, the American poet Ezra Pound was due to stand trial for treason for his broadcasts in Fascist Italy during the Second World War.

Before the trial could take place, however, he was pronounced insane. Escaping a possible death sentence, he was sent to St. Elizabeths Hospital near Washington, D.C., where he was held for more than a decade.

At the hospital, Pound was at his most infamous, and most contradictory. He was a genius and a traitor, a great poet and a madman. He was also an irresistible figure and, in his cell on Chestnut Ward and on the elegant hospital grounds, he was visited by the major poets and writers of his time. T. S. Eliot, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, John Berryman, Charles Olson, and Frederick Seidel all went to sit with him. They listened to him speak and wrote of what they had seen. This was perhaps the worlds most unorthodox literary salon: convened by a fascist, held in a lunatic asylum, with chocolate brownies and mayonnaise sandwiches served for tea.

Pound continues to divide all who read and think of him. At the hospital, the doctors who studied him and the poets who learned from him each had a different understanding of this wild and most difficult man. Tracing Pound through the eyes of his visitors, Daniel SwiftsThe Bughousetells a story of politics, madness, and modern art in the twentieth century.

This story of Pound's politics and his prejudices takes on fresh significance...Swift is an alert and eloquent guide...I guarantee thatThe Bughousewill vex you into thinking more deeply about the relation between an artist's life and work, and perhaps even about the old-fashioned question of moral responsibility.Maureen Corrigan, NPR'sFresh Air

[The Bughouse] abounds in striking details. The New Yorker

Engrossing . . . immensely fascinating. Diego Baez,Booklist

A sensitive investigation into the enigmatic, prodigious minl,