[log in to unmask] wrote:

>
> I assume by "our interpretation" that you're referring to yourself and Carrol
> Cox.

?????

I see that I somewhat unguardedly stepped into the middle of some battles
that have been raging and of which I'm not wholly aware. Perhaps a couple
observations will help give context to my remarks.

First, a geneal point: By the age of 40 what used to be called one's
"sensibility" (see Blackmur's essays) is pretty well formed, and even
very radical changes in one's "world view" at that point are not apt
to have much of an impact on one's responses to literature. The
result of such a change on my part is that all or almost all of the writers
with whom I am most deeply familiar and whose work I respond to
with most pleasure are also writers whose "world view" is radically
different from my own. I am not engaged in or a part of any campaign
against Pound. I can open the work almost at random and find myself
lost in its pages.

On another level, I do find the poem to be profoundly consonant with
the drive of u.s. capitalist and imperialist culture -- and his specific
anti-u.s. opinions don't change that fundamental consonance. He may
have personally despised FDR and adored Mussolini -- but that is
superficial to the fact that either of those figures constitutes an
exemplification of the thrust of the poem. They are both representative
figures of the "Free World." Free World as in Phil Och's fine lines:

But somehow it is strange to hear the State Department say
You are living in the free world, in the free world you must stay

(I.e.: The rhetoric for 50 years now has pretty clearly identified
"free" with "non-communist." Hence Hitler and Mussolini belong
to the "free world."_

Carrol Cox