Omar Pound

Edit links
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Omar Pound
Born
Omar Shakespear Pound

(1926-09-10)10 September 1926
Paris, France
Died2 March 2010(2010-03-02) (aged 83)
Princeton, New Jersey, United States
NationalityFrench
EducationBA in anthropology and French (1954), MA in Islamic Studies (1958).
Alma mater
  • Hamilton College
    , New York
  • London School of Oriental and African Studies
  • McGill University
Occupation(s)Writer, teacher, translator
SpouseElizabeth Stevenson Parkin
Children2
Parent(s)Ezra Pound and Dorothy Shakespear

Omar Shakespear Pound (10 September 1926 – 2 March 2010)[1] was an Anglo-American writer, teacher, and translator. The son of Ezra Pound and his wife Dorothy Shakespear, Pound was the author of Arabic & Persian Poems (1970) and co-author of Wyndham Lewis: A Descriptive Bibliography (1978). He also wrote poems of his own and published material about his parents.[2]

Early life and education

Omar was born in the American Hospital of Paris, the son of poet Ezra Pound and his wife artist Dorothy Shakespear, who were living in Italy at the time. The couple had been in Paris since May for the concert performance of an opera Ezra had written with two musicians, and had stayed on in Paris because Dorothy wanted the baby to be born at the American Hospital. Ernest Hemingway, who lived in Paris and was a friend of the Pounds, drove her there for the birth. Ezra signed the birth certificate the following day at the local town hall in Neuilly and wrote to his father, "next generation (male) arrived. Both D & it appear to be doing well."[3] Omar was born 14 months after the daughter of Ezra and his mistress, violinist Olga Rudge.[4]

Dorothy took Omar to London when he was 18 months old, where she stayed for a year, then left him in the care of his maternal grandmother,

London Blitz.[8]

Career and writing

Military service

After leaving Charterhouse in 1942 to train in

U.S. Army in 1945 and served in France and Germany.[8] He travelled to Italy looking for his father when Ezra was arrested there for treason in 1945, although he was not able to see him,[9] and he visited his father briefly that year when Ezra was held in St. Elizabeths psychiatric hospital in Washington, D.C. He was present during one of the subsequent court hearings.[2]

Teaching and later education

Later Pound attended

Islamic Studies from McGill University in Montreal.[8]

Pound taught at the Roxbury Latin School in Boston; the American School of Tangier, which he founded in 1950,[10] the Cambridgeshire College of Arts and Technology; and from 1980 Princeton University.[8][11]

Writing

Pound is the author of Arabic & Persian Poems (1970) and co-author of Wyndham Lewis: A Descriptive Bibliography (1978). He was also a founding trustee of the Wyndham Lewis Memorial Trust.[8] His own poetry was published in The Dying Sorcerer (1985), Pissle and the Holy Grail (1987), Poems Inside and Out (1999), Watching the Worlds Go By (2001), and in literary magazines.[8] He also published material about his parents, including Ezra Pound and Dorothy Shakespear, Their Letters 1908–1914 (1984).[2]

Personal life

Pound married Elizabeth Stevenson Parkin in 1955,[2] and they had two children, Katherine Shakespear Pound and Oriana Davenport Pound.[1] In his biographical entry in Contemporary Authors, Pound listed both his politics and his religion as "nil". He clarified in an interview that he considered himself "fundamentally a mystic", adding "Even saying one doesn't have a religion is an acceptance of the mysteries of life, and I think acceptance of mysteries gives one a sense of wonder."[11] Pound died aged 83 in Princeton, New Jersey.[1]

Selected works

References

  1. ^ a b c "Pound, Omar Shakespear". The New York Times, 10 March 2010.
  2. ^ a b c d e f Pound, Omar (2005). "Pound, Omar Shakespear (b. 1926)". In Demetres P. Tryphonopoulos and Stephen Adams (eds.). The Ezra Pound Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 239.
  3. ISBN 978-0-571-14786-1
    .
  4. ^ Carpenter 1988, 440.
  5. ^ Carpenter 1988, 455–456.
  6. ^ Pound, Omar; Spoo, Robert (1999). Ezra and Dorothy Pound: Letters in Captivity, 1945–1946. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 126.
  7. ^ Carpenter 1988, 554.
  8. ^ a b c d e f "Omar S. Pound (obituary)". Town Topics. Vol. LXIV, no. 10. Princeton, NJ. 10 March 2010. Retrieved 2 July 2012.
  9. ^ Pound & Spoo 1999, 209.
  10. ^ "School Profile". The American School of Tangier. Archived from the original on 22 August 2012. Retrieved 2 July 2012.
  11. ^ a b Bourne, Daniel. "A Conversation With Omar Pound". Artful Dodge. The College of Wooster. Archived from the original on 31 March 2012. Retrieved 2 July 2012.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Omar_Pound&oldid=1183647631"