SOURCE: "Pound, Vorticism and the New Esthetic," in Mosaic: A Journal of the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature, Vol. XVI, No. 4, Fall, 1983, pp. 83-96.

In the following essay, Tucker studies Pound's contribution to Vorticism as well as its influence on his work.

Groups set the tone for artistic London in the second decade of the century. The shifting alliances and aggressive posturings of the politicians became fashionable among artists, who attacked one another with a fine and contemporary disregard for their shared interests. The young Ezra Pound, appalled by the other war that first threatened and then engulfed his Europe, busied himself on the home front, stirring things up when he found them too quiet, encouraging the creative belligerence on which groups thrive.

Imagism and Vorticism were the groups to which Pound most enthusiastically committed his energies at this time. Of the two, Imagism has evoked the greater scholarly...