Guilford College will award a Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa, at Commencement on May 17 to Mary de Rachewiltz, an Italian-American scholar, poet, translator and long-term contributor to the College’s study abroad program at Brunnenburg Castle in northern Italy.

A daughter of American poet Ezra Pound and violinist Olga Rudge, Mary taught a poetry course to Guilford students at Brunnenburg from the inception of the program in 1992 through 2014. In the spring of 2022, she hosted students for tea and chatted with them on her walks up the mountain and during a reception at a Brunnenburg museum.

“Mary embodies Guilford’s values of excellence, simplicity and stewardship,” said Acting President Jean Bordewich. “I am told that her poetry course was a formative experience for many of our students and her Venice excursion for students was one of their favorite memories while at Brunnenburg.”

Mary, who is 99, will be awarded the honorary degree in absentia and will be presented with a diploma in person at a later date.  

Despite having only a few years of formal higher education, Mary became an accomplished poet and scholar. Her bibliography includes Discretions (1971), Ezra Pound, Father and Teacher (1975) and many co-authored scholarly books and publications. She translated her father’s Cantos into Italian, and published several of her own collections of poems.

Mary served as a fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (1973-75) and was a curator of the Beinecke Rare Book Room and Manuscript Library at Yale University. She also lectured at colleges and universities throughout the United States and Canada.

Her life and work were recently featured in the book Let the Wind Speak: Mary de Rachewiltz and Ezra Pound by Carol Schloss (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023).