Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an
expatriate American poet and critic who was a major figure in the early
modernist movement. His contribution to poetry began with his development of
Imagism, a movement derived from classical
Chinese and
Japanese poetry, stressing clarity, precision and economy of language. His best-known works include
Ripostes (1912),
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920) and the unfinished 120-section epic,
The Cantos (1917–69).