THE CANTOS (536 pp.)Ezra PoundNew Directions ($5).
When the American Army drove the Germans out of Italy in 1945, it took among other prisoners Ezra Pound, expatriate poet, radio propagandist for Mussolini and self-made pundit who thought Hitler a "martyr" comparable to Joan of Arc. After a short stay in a prison camp near Pisa, where he continued to write poetry, the aging (63), rheumy-eyed poet was brought back to the U.S. to face treason charges. The case never came to trial; instead he was declared insane, and still languishes in St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington.
The eleven poems Pound wrote behind U.S....