It is possible that the enduring image of the American poet Ezra Pound, both in literary history and the popular imagination, was defined in a single gesture, one that was to cast a long shadow over not only his innovative contributions to English-language poetry, but also his energy in helping to shape what we now call Modernism. In 1945, Pound was found guilty of treason by an American court for broadcasting on behalf of Mussolini's Italian government during the war. He escaped execution on grounds of insanity and was sent to St Elizabeth's in Washington, a mental hospital where he would stay for more than twelve years. In April 1958, the indictment for treason was dismissed, and in June Pound boarded a ship to take him to his beloved Italy. On his arrival in Naples, journalists and photographers came on board the Cristoforo Colombo. Pound made anti-American and anti-Semitic statements and when photographers asked him to pose, with a smile he put his left hand on his hip and raised his right arm to give the fascist salute. It was this gesture that both confirmed and sealed Pound’s public image as an American traitor.

The exact nature of Pound's anti-Semitism and racism, and the extent of his active support of Mussolini's fascist regime, have rightly been a recurrent source of debate in Poundian scholarship. However, the general image of him as ‘a fascist poet’ has inevitably become an important element in any general evaluation of Pound's position in literary history. The assessment of his artistic importance and the huge impact Pound has had on developments in poetry has been less of an issue amongst scholars and critics. In Lives of the Poets (1998), a general history of poetry, Michael Schmidt neatly summarizes this in clear terms: ‘After Pound, we read poetry differently. If, that is, we read Pound at all. Without him, it is hard to know how we could read Basil Bunting, Louis Zukofsky, Charles Olson, Charles Reznikoff, Robert Duncan and a host of others. […] Without Pound, much of the most innovative poetry looks like nonsense’.

Pound's undeniable literary importance makes the political element of his work an issue to be confronted by anyone wishing to engage with him.