The Bughouse: The Poetry, Politics, and Madness of Ezra Pound

by Daniel Swift

Overview

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 world’s 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 Swift’s The Bughouse tells a story of politics, madness, and modern art in the twentieth century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374538040
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	11/20/2018
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	318
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.72(d)

About the Author

Daniel Swift teaches at the New College of the Humanities in London. His first book, Bomber County, was long-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize and the Guardian First Book Award, and his essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, the New Statesman, and Harper’s Magazine.

Table of Contents

Prologue: Liz Bish 1

Timeline of Pound's Years at St Elizabeths 22

Part 1 1946

1 Hell-Hole 31

2 Kafferty 61

Part 2 1947-53

3 Amurika 83

4 The Bughouse 122

Part 3 1954-58

5 The Same Cellar 153

6 CasaPound 195

7 Ezuversity 221

Epilogue: Trying to Write Paradise 255

Essay on Sources 263

Acknowledgements 285

Index 287

Editorial Reviews

This story of Pound's politics and his prejudices takes on fresh significance...Swift is an alert and eloquent guide...I guarantee that The Bughouse will 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's Fresh Air

“[The Bughouse] abounds in striking details.” —The New Yorker

"Engrossing . . . immensely fascinating." —Diego Baez, Booklist

"A sensitive investigation into the enigmatic, prodigious mind of poet Ezra Pound . . . [Daniel Swift] draws on memoirs . . . as well as interviews, a close reading of Pound's writings, and medical records to create a multidimensional portrait of a celebrated, controversial literary figure." —Kirkus Reviews

"The Bughouse is an extraordinary book of real, passionate research that keeps surprising and illuminating by turns. It has made my love of Pound far more difficult—as it should." —Edmund de Waal

"'Pound,' he quipped of his name, 'an enclosure for stray animals.' Swift tells the stories of six poets (although there were many more) who were gathered by Uncle Ez into his pen at St. Elizabeths. Hospitalized Pound here emerges as the uncanny figure of the hospes, at once stranger, guest, and host, at once a welcoming organism and a dangerous, parasitical virus." —Richard Sieburth, author of Instigations: Ezra Pound and Remy de Gourmont

"To understand an artist as compromised by circumstances—and by his own many contradictions—as Ezra Pound, we have to trace a complex path through a maze of half-truths, myth, and simplification. The Bughouse does so with supreme care, critical acumen, and humanity, shedding a whole new light not only on Pound the man, but also on the shape and character of The Cantos, one of the most seriously flawed and truly brilliant artworks of the twentieth century." —John Burnside

“A wonderful portrait of Ezra Pound in all his moods—mad, bad, and blindingly sane.”
—A. Alvarez, author of The Savage God

From the Publisher

05/22/2017
London-based academic and essayist Swift (Shakespeare’s Common Prayers) gives an intriguing, if overwrought, account of Ezra Pound’s 12-year stay in St. Elizabeths Hospital, a federal psychiatric hospital near Washington, D.C. In Swift’s estimation, Pound (1885–1972) had a starring role in 20th-century poetry and the birth of modernism. Swift begins his account in 1945 with Pound’s arrest and imprisonment in Italy, where the poet had made profascist radio broadcasts throughout WWII. Pound suffered a nervous breakdown after being kept for weeks in an outdoor cage and, willing to be declared insane instead of being tried for treason, went to what he called the “bughouse,” St. Elizabeths. Too many digressions and descriptions of Swift’s research experiences blunt this story’s impact, but Swift does vividly describe Pound’s confinement, which lasted until 1958. A stubborn patient who refused the mandated occupational therapy, Pound read and wrote constantly and received a parade of famous guests—Elizabeth Bishop, T.S. Eliot, and William Carlos Williams among them. Some leading psychiatrists and admirers (then and since) have thought Pound was faking insanity, but Swift thinks he may not have been. Swift’s unfocused narrative style gets in the way of probing study, but Pound’s ambiguous sanity and larger-than-life personality still make for fascinating subjects. Many readers will be drawn in, even if they find Pound himself detestable. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

09/15/2017
Swift (English, New Coll. of the Humanities, UK; Bomber County) calls writer Ezra Pound (1885–1972) "the most difficult man of the 20th century," documenting how he was a mass of contradictions during the debate about his alleged madness which, Swift concludes, will always remain an open-ended question. The author presents Pound's life during his years of confinement at Washington's St. Elizabeths hospital for the insane (1945–58) from the perspective of those who interacted with him there. Arrested and indicted for treason for his pro-fascist radio broadcasts in Italy during World War II, the poet was hospitalized to avoid trial and possible execution. While at St. Elizabeths, he was visited by literary greats as well as "disciples" for whom he held court. He was released when the indictment was dropped in 1958, thanks in large part to a campaign by creators in various fields, since he was never convicted of a crime and it was never determined whether he was mad or sane. Interspersed with Pound's story is a history of St. Elizabeths and mental health-care as well as commentary on some of his poems. VERDICT Recommended for both scholars and general readers interested in this most enigmatic of 20th-century literary figures. [See Prepub Alert, 5/15/17.]—Denise J. Stankovics, Vernon, CT

Library Journal

2017-08-20
A sensitive investigation into the enigmatic, prodigious mind of poet Ezra Pound (1885-1972).From 1945 to 1958, Pound was incarcerated at St. Elizabeths Hospital for the Criminally Insane, a federal asylum in Washington, D.C. Although sequestered from the outside world, he was hardly isolated: among his many visitors were "tourists, young activists, ambassadors and academics," and prominent and aspiring poets: among them, Robert Lowell, Marianne Moore, Charles Olson, Allen Tate, William Carlos Williams, John Berryman, Randall Jarrell, and Archibald MacLeish. Except for T.S. Eliot, who had won the Nobel Prize in literature, many of his visitors were at the early stages of their careers, and they sought Pound's encouragement or advice. "Visiting Pound became a social event and a literary moment," writes Swift (English/New Coll. of the Humanities, London; Shakespeare's Common Prayers: The Book of Common Prayer and the Elizabethan Age, 2012, etc.), who draws on memoirs of these visits as well as interviews, a close reading of Pound's writings, and medical records to create a multidimensional portrait of a celebrated, controversial literary figure. Pound was declared insane after being charged with treason for fascist, racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-American radio broadcasts that he made in Mussolini's Italy during World War II. The insanity defense exempted him from the death penalty, but it has confounded biographers and literary critics, who have struggled to reconcile his creative works with his politics and purported mental state. During his incarceration, Pound produced much new work, leading the U.S. attorney, in 1954, to ask Pound's physician why a man "who seemingly is mentally capable of translating and publishing poetry…allegedly is not mentally capable of being brought to justice." Was he insane, many wondered, or was he "a coward and a cheat" who contrived the defense to save himself? Rather than trying to resolve those questions, Swift takes a prismatic view, allowing "rival tellings to sing their discord." The treason indictment was dismissed in 1958 after "a chorus of pleas from cultural celebrities," and Pound left the U.S. for Italy. A shrewd, circumspect literary biography.

Kirkus Reviews