How did Ezra Pound influence W.B. Yeats’s later poetic style?

Ezra Pound played a pivotal role in the evolution of W.B. Yeats’s poetic style, successfully persuading the older, already famous poet to abandon the vague, grandiloquent language of his early Romantic and Pre-Raphaelite influences.12

Pound’s influence was most direct during the years 1909 to 1914, a period that marked a decisive shift in Yeats’s work. In 1913, the two poets spent several months together at Stone Cottage in Sussex, where Pound served as Yeats’s secretary. During this time, Pound was editing translations of Japanese Noh plays, which deeply impressed Yeats. The Noh drama provided Yeats with a model for a stylized, intimate, and symbolic form of theater that utilized masks, dance, and song, leading Yeats to develop his own equivalent in works such as Four Plays for Dancers.3

Under Pound's guidance, Yeats’s verse underwent a "tightening and hardening," resulting in a more sparse, resonant, and colloquial style. This transition allowed Yeats to confront reality with greater directness, moving away from the otherworldly atmosphere of his youth toward the mature, precise, and passionate poetry found in his later collections.32