20 th CENTURY WRITERS WHO
INFLUENCED THE BEAT POETS
I
Ezra Pound (1885-1972) was described by T.S
Eliot as “more responsible for the twentieth-
century revolution in poetry than any other
individual” (Hoover, 1994). He was dedicated to
new forms of energy and immediacy in his poetry.
In his essay “A Retrospect” he speaks about the
new age in poetry, the “new fashion in poetry”
which would become a reference point for
Zukofsky, Olson and Creeley who were to follow
upon the stylistic divergence of his ideas (Cook,
2004). The “energy” Pound spoke of in his
writings was the “energy of the mind”. Pound
urges us to “compose in the sequence of the
musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome”.
He stresses that there is no “marked metre” in the
“vers libre” and that we should compare “ars
poetica” directly to music. Pound stresses the need
for spontaneity and surprise as ‘technique poetique'.
Pound also creates a definition of ‘absolute
rhythm' and defines it as that which directly
applies to an emotion expressed and sensed. In
16