Sixteen Words for Water - Garrick WA

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (October 30, 1885 – November 1, 1972) was an American expatriate poet, critic and intellectual who was a major figure of the Modernist movement in the first half of the 20th century. He is generally considered the poet most responsible for defining and promoting a modernist aesthetic in poetry.

He disapproved of American involvement in [WWII] and tried to use his scant political contacts in Washington D.C. to prevent it. When Pound spoke on Italian radio, he gave a series of talks on political and cultural matters, art and patronage and economic theories. Pound believed that economics was the core issue for the cause of World War II.

Specifically, his talks were largely about usury and the notion that representative democracy has been usurped by bankers' infiltration of governments through the existence of central banks, which made governments pay interest to private banks for the use of their own money. He maintained that the central bank's ability to create money out of thin air allowed banking interests to buy up American and British media outlets to sway opinion in favour of the war and the banks. Pound believed that economic freedom was a prerequisite for a free country.

Inevitably, he touched on various sensitive political matters in his denunciations of the war. In addition, various of his comments were considered anti-semitic. Pound was indicted for treason by the United States government in 1943. On May 3, 1945, as Mussolini's puppet regime tumbled, Pound was arrested by partisans. At his request, he was then brought to the U.S. He was found incompetent to face trial by a special federal jury and sent to St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C., where he remained for 12 years from 1946 to 1958.

The play deals with the events around his release from St. Elizabeths Hospital.