Chris:
   Thank you for your insight into teaching Pound to undergraduates.  I had a
terrible problem in one of my introductory classes this semester with Eliot, and I
must admit that I gave up trying.  In the other class, I had great luck with Yeats
("The Wild Swans at Coole" and "Adam's Curse"), Eliot's "Prufrock", and Pound's
"Mauberley" because of a wonderful discussion about the difficulty of writing
poetry and of feelings of futility/the overwhelming nature of the Modern world,
which my students were really able to relate to.  I guess there is similarity in
the feelings now and a hundred years ago as far as technology and what it means to
the common man and how any artist can create something meaningful in the midst of
all the superficiality
    The translations are good for undergraduates, as you say, and "Ballad of the
Goodly Fere" gets a little interest, I have found as well.
    Have a Merry Christmas.  I am going to Les Deux Magots to write poetry and
drink coffee.  (I don't care if I am a ridiculous American tourist!)
     -Grace Davis

75COFFMAN wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> With regard to EP in the introductory poetry classroom: Students (maybe just
> mine?) have trouble with the Modernists generally, and Pound is definitely no
> exception.  After trying to make Eliot and Yeats comprehensible to
> undergraduates, I get to EP.  Having made some aborted attempts to explain the
> first few Cantos, I have settled on some of the traditional 'this is an
> imagist poem' examples, and the Li Po translations.  The latter, for some
> reason I cannot identify, seem the most popular and accessible.  I think the
> problem with the other material is simply one of time--to teach Pound's
> *poetry*, one needs to teach a lot of *Pound*, and that means teaching a bit
> of eveything.  There simply is not time in an introductory class.  Despite the
> problems, I think most of my students end the semester with some idea of EP's
> importance to poetic history in general, and several do choose to write (often
> rather poor, if well-received and enthusiastically written) papers on EP.
> Have others had similar experiences?  Any advice on teaching EP to those who
> are novices with Pound and poetry in general?
>
> On another note: Does anyone know of any extended considerations of the
> Pound-Mencken connection?  It strikes me as odd that this has not been
> thoroughly examined, given the length of their correspondence and the fairly
> positive comments from Pound on Mencken.  But I have not seen any sources that
> deal with the relationship in detail.  What am I missing?  Just casting about
> blindly for dissertation topics ...
>
> Happy holidays,
> Chris Coffman