For the week of June 25 - July 1, 2003

Literary conference comes home to Idaho

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By DANA DUGAN
Express Staff Writer

Long a controversial subject, the poet Ezra Pound, who was born in Hailey in 1885, was a preeminent poet and literary influence for much of his life. In the early teens of the 20th century, he was famous for the generosity with which he advanced the work of his contemporaries.

Pound worked with such notable writers as James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, W.B. Yeats, T.S. Elliot, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams and Marianne Moore. Despite his Fascist leanings during World War II, he helped define and promote a modernist sensibility in poetry.

By choice he lived mostly in Europe and after continuous appeals from writers won his release from a Washington, D.C., hospital in 1958, Pound returned to Italy and settled in Venice, where he died, a semi-recluse, in 1972.

His birthplace in Hailey has been recently renovated to reflect not only his contributions but to provide a venue for artistic and cultural events, under the name the Hailey Cultural Center.

Taking advantage of the Idahoan connections, the 20th International Ezra Pound Conference takes place in Sun Valley over the Fourth of July holiday weekend. Scholars and students from 10 different countries will attend the meeting to discuss Pound's life and work. Two eminent and accomplished American poets, Robert Creeley and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, will join them.

Four conference events are open to the public. Both Creeley and Ferlinghetti will give public readings of their work. On July 2, Creeley reads in the Continental Room in the Sun Valley Inn at 8:15 p.m. Ferlinghetti reads also in the Continental Inn on July 3 at 8:15 p.m.

Along with the world's leading Pound scholar, Professor Hugh Kenner, the poets participate in a panel discussion of Pound as an American figure on July 5 at 11:15 a.m. in the Continental Room. Finally, New York University literary critic Professor Denis Donoghue presents the keynote address, July 5 at 2 p.m. in the Sun Valley Lodge Dining Room.

General admission tickets for each of the poetry readings and the panel discussion are available for $10 ($5 for students with I.D.). Admission to the keynote address is free, but tickets are required. Preferred seating for all four events is available for a Patron's donation of $100. Tickets are available at Iconoclast books in Ketchum, and other area bookstores or by calling—toll free— 877-726-1564.

The Ezra Pound Conference is sponsored by the Ezra Pound Association of Hailey and by Idaho State University, and supported in part by the Idaho Humanities Council, a state-based program of the National Endowment of the Humanities.

An ice cream social is held yearly at the Ezra Pound Birthplace on July 4 after the parade. The conference participants will spend the day at the Cultural Center. July 4 is also the birthday of late Hailey journalist, Roberta McKercher, who lived in the home for many years.

The conference will be attended by at least 100 people, including Pound’s daughter, Italian princess Mary de Rachewiltz, and other descendants of Pound’s. Born in 1925, in Bressanone, Italy, to Ezra Pound and the violinist Olga Rudge, de Rachewiltz is the curator of the Ezra Pound Archive, Center for the Study of Ezra Pound and His Contemporaries, Beinecke Rare Book Room and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

A prison guard who knew Pound when he was jailed for treason will be in attendance. Canadian filmmaker Bernard Dew will screen his film based on Pound’s "Cathay" translations, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival last year.

The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.