James Laughlin, New Directions Press, and the Remaking of Ezra Pound

Although James Laughlin (1914–1997) came from one of Pittsburgh's leading steel-making families, his passions were literary rather than industrial—he wanted to be a poet. Laughlin was a freshman at Harvard when he traveled to Rapallo, Italy, in 1933 to meet Ezra Pound (1885–1972), and he returned the following year to enroll in the poet's "Ezuversity." Pound dismissed Laughlin's poetic talents, advising the wealthy young man to make himself over into a publisher. Laughlin did just that, fou...