King Ezra

King Ezra takes the reader from Ezra Pound's incarceration by the U. S. military after World War II, up to his final days in Venice in the early 1970s. M. G. Stephens draws upon his literary reserves as a poet, fiction writer, and playwright to tell this tragic story of a flawed genius.

About the Author :
M. G. Stephens has published 25 books, including the novels Season at Coole and The Brooklyn Book of the Dead. Two thousand-twenty-two is the 50th anniversary of the publication of Season at Coole by E. P. Dutton. Last year (2021), MadHat Press published his hybrid work of prose and poetry about an out of work actor who lands the part of Hamlet, and is entitled History of Theatre or the Glass of Fashion; it has been praised by novelists such as Hilma Wolitzer and Richard Price, as well as poets such as George Szirtes and Michael Anania. His nonfiction books include the travel memoir Lost in Seoul (Random House, 1990) and the essay collection Green Dreams, which won the AWP award in nonfiction, and was later picked by Joyce Carol Oates as one of the 100 most important American nonfiction books of the 20th century. His play Our Father ran on Theatre Row (42nd Street in New York) for over five years, and has had multiple productions in London, Chicago and Los Angeles. In 2001, Stephens moved abroad to London, where he lived for fifteen years. During that time he was active in London stages, and had plays produced by Pentameters Theatre in North London (Hampstead) and the Bread & Roses Theatre in South London (Clapham). He earned all his degrees after he was thirty years old, including a doctorate from the University of Essex in Colchester, England that he was awarded at the age of 60. Before moving abroad, Stephens taught creative writing workshops at Princeton, New York and Columbia universities; in London, he taught at the University of London (Queen Mary). Along with his novel King Ezra, Spuyten Duyvil recently published Stephens' third Coole family novel, Kid Coole, about a young, up-and-coming lightweight boxer out of the Hudson Valley in New York. Season at Coole, The Brooklyn Book of the Dead and Kid Coole comprise The Coole Trilogy.

Review :
M. G. Stephens has written a novel about one of the most controversial figures of the Modernist movement-Ezra Pound. During the Second World War, Ezra Pound worked as a propagandist for the Italian Fascists, helping their cause with his regular broadcasts over the radio. This activity led to Pound's being charged with treason, though he would never be put on trial for it. Instead, he was committed to a hospital in Washington, D.C. for the criminally insane for more than a decade. King Ezra takes the reader from Ezra Pound's incarceration by the U. S. military after World War II, up to his final days in Venice in the early 1970s. M. G. Stephens draws upon his literary reserves as a poet, fiction writer, and playwright to tell this tragic story of a flawed genius. Stephens' prose can be quick, idiomatic or inward looking and contemplative, but it is everywhere vivid, engaging and surprising. Michael Anania Michael Stephens' range is astonishing; his sentences are elegantly crafted from the heart and the imagination. Alan Ziegler