Five Fascinating Facts about Ezra Pound

Fun Ezra Pound facts, including his unusual middle name and his even weirder fashion sense

1. Ezra Pound’s middle name was Loomis. Or rather, one of his middle names. Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was born in Idaho in 1885; a childhood friend was Hilda Doolittle, who would become known as an imagist poet under the initials ‘H. D.’ (the initialism was Pound’s own PR idea) and, later, as a novelist. Pound even asked Doolittle to marry him in 1907; she declined (as he was reportedly seeing two other women at the time, it’s not hard to see why!).

Pound would be the driving force behind the literary movement known as imagism in the years 1913-15, and would also contribute to modernist poetry himself with a number of famous poems, among them the two-line imagist masterpiece ‘In a Station of the Metro’, the long poem Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920), and the very long poem The Cantos (Pound’s life’s work, and over 800 pages in full). The Cantos is a vast work, described by Hugh Kenner as the chronicle of Pound’s own life, and written over a period of nearly half a century. (It was described by Pound, in an early draft, as a ‘rag-bag’.)

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25 Weird and Interesting Little-Known Phobias

25 rare phobias – how many of these do you suffer from?

It’s well-known that a fear of spiders is ‘arachnophobia’, but what’s a fear of wasps? What’s the name for a fear of remaining single forever? We’ve been scouring the reference books for some less well-known phobias and have compiled the definitive list. Although some of the following phobias are pretty weird, we like to think that many of the phenomena they describe are quite common.

Koinoniphobia is a fear of being in a room full of people.

Deipnophobia is the dread of dinner-parties.

Scopophobia is a fear of being stared at.

Medectophobia is the fear that one’s penis is visible through one’s clothes.

Automysophobia is a fear of being dirty.

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Interesting Facts about Biggles

Some interesting trivia about the Biggles books and their author, Captain W. E. Johns

The Biggles books, detailing the adventures of fictional pilot James Bigglesworth, were hugely popular in the mid-twentieth century. Ever since the young pilot’s first appearance – in a story called ‘The White Fokker’ in 1932 – he has been delighting and entertaining readers. His creator, Captain W. E. Johns (1893-1968), was a prolific author and wrote over a hundred Biggles books in total.

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15 Great Sourced Mark Twain Quotes

The best funny, witty, and wise Mark Twain quotes

Mark Twain often gets the credit for all sorts of witty lines, but it turns out that he didn’t say many of them. So we set ourselves the task of tracking down the lines that Mark Twain actually did say – and this post is the result. We hope you enjoy reading these 15 of the very best Mark Twain quotes as much as we enjoyed compiling them.

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—’tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning. – Letter to George Bainton, 15 October 1888

I haven’t a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices whatsoever. – ‘Answers to Correspondents’, The Californian, 17 June 1865

I have been complimented many times and they always embarrass me; I always feel that they have not said enough. – Speech, 23 September 1907

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. More Maxims of Mark, 1927

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