SOURCE: Berryman, John. “The Poetry of Ezra Pound.” In Ezra Pound: The Critical Heritage, edited by Eric Homberger, pp. 388-404. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972.

In the following essay, originally published in the Partisan Review in April 1949, Berryman attempts to mark the influences underlying the various phases of Pound's work from his early roots in Imagism to his later Fascist views.

Since Pound has been for several generations now one of the most famous of living poets, it may occasion surprise that an introduction to his poetry, such as I was lately invited to make for New Directions, should be thought necessary at all. It may, but I doubt that it will. Not much candor is wanted for the observation that though he is famous and his poetry is famous his poetry is not familiar, that serious readers as a class have relinquished even the imperfect hold they...