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This American poet was influential to the modern poetic movement both in England and in the U.S.: A) Ezra Pound B) William Butler Yeats C) W.H....

Since Ezra Pound is the only American on this list, the answer is simple. Pound was born in Idaho but spent most of his life in Europe, first in London, then Paris and for most of the second half of his life, in Italy. He was indeed most influential to the modern poetic movement in both England and the United States. He was influential in promoting the work of several of the most famous literary...

Since Ezra Pound is the only American on this list, the answer is simple. Pound was born in Idaho but spent most of his life in Europe, first in London, then Paris and for most of the second half of his life, in Italy. He was indeed most influential to the modern poetic movement in both England and the United States. He was influential in promoting the work of several of the most famous literary figures of the era including the Americans T.S. Eliot and Robert Frost, as well as the Irishmen James Joyce and William Butler Yeats. He even worked for Yeats as a secretary during World War I. Pound believed that Yeats was the greatest living poet at the time. Pound was also influential through his establishment of imagism, a doctrine which sought to strip poetry of extreme embellishment and focus on clear, direct language. This influence was especially crucial to poets such as Eliot and William Carlos Williams (see the famous poem "The Red Wheelbarrow"), and Ernest Hemingway, who made the use of direct statements totally lacking in ornamentation a cornerstone of his prose. The ultimate importance of Pound to modernist literature cannot be over stated and is best summarized in the following biography section found on the page about Pound:



Pound’s impact on twentieth century literature and culture was twofold. First, he largely reestablished the artist as a figure of important, and often provocative, influence in contemporary events. Calling artists “the antennae of the race,” Pound implied that they not only anticipate society’s direction but also influence its course. Second, he provided poetic techniques that are able to accept and incorporate all that is vital of past art into the art of the present and future. All artists can draw upon and use the same themes, images, and words, so long as they revitalize them; in Pound’s words, as long as they “make it new.”


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