Sixteen Words For Water

Sixteen Words For Water pursues the poet and prisoner that was Ezra Pound. As the "Inventor of Modern Poetry", Pound remains a seminal figure in the history of modern literature. His intellectual promiscuity allowed him to explore all manner of living and dead "Kulchur", yet he also embraced both Fascism and Anti-Semitism.

Incarcerated after the Second World War, Pound was deemed unfit to plead to a charge of treason relating to his alleged Anti-American broadcasts during the war. In this play, set in St. Elizabeth's Hospital. Ezra Pound faces the choice: sanity or insanity: the continued safety of the asylum or a courtroom and the possibility of the death sentence.

In 'Sixteen Words For Water', Billy Marshall-Stonekink examines the paradox of a man who was both an acknowledged genius and an anti-semite. He does not offer an apologia for Pound and his often bizarre causes, but rather a profound insight into guilt and innocence, into the wealth of Pound's imagination and the poverty of his politics. Throughout the play, he elucidates Pound's understanding of such paradoxes with great wit and compassion.

Author: Billy Marshall

Publisher: Angus&Robertson

Released Date: 1991

ISBN: 9780207174124