The Correspondence of Ezra Pound and Senator William Borah

Already one of the most famous of American poets, Ezra Pound (1885-1972) was an expatriate living in Rapallo, Italy, by the time he began his six-year correspondence with Idaho senator William Borah (1865-1940). These thirty-one previously unpublished letters document Pound's efforts to educate, for the role of the presidency, the one Republican statesman he believed could beat Roosevelt if nominated by his party.

Pound worked feverishly to recruit Borah as an advocate of the radical economic theories he believed would solve his homeland's problems. On the one hand, his letters depict an advisor confident of possessing the necessary savvy to beat FDR and successfully end the Depression while also keeping the United States out of a looming European war. On the other hand, Pound emerges as a man in turmoil, frantic to influence from his distant post the course of American politics by convincing those in power of the theories he espoused.

Borah, then chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, responded politely to Pound's diatribes and met with him briefly when Pound returned to the States in 1939. The correspondence, though mainly one-sided, reflects how strongly each man adhered to his personal convictions, Pound in favor of and Borah increasingly opposed to fascism.

This volume is enhanced by Sarah C. Holmes's generous annotations on the individuals, organizations, legislative bills, and theories Pound mentions -- often cryptically -- in his letters.