Ezra Pound and Senator Bronson Cutting

The correspondence of Ezra Pound (1885-1972) and Senator Bronson Cutting (1888-1935) of New Mexico sheds new light on both historic figures and evokes the lively intellectual and political climate of the early years of the Great Depression. As the first of Pound's many political correspondences ever to be published, these letters contribute to a reassessment of the poet's political ideas. The correspondence of the poet and the senator constitutes a significant chapter in the cultural history of an era whose complexities are often over-simplified for popular consumption. For example, the stereotypical view of Pound as crank and traitor clearly needs revision in light of these letters. Seen in context, Pound's politics in the early 1930s do not look particularly eccentric, unpatriotic, or uninformed. The twenty-six letters Pound wrote to Senator Cutting, a prominent Progressive Republican, covered matters as diverse as censorship, international copyright, prohibition, the diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union, public works, old-age pensions, and the international Social Credit movement. In turn, Cutting's letters to Pound suggest the full range of the senator's activities on the national scene.