I've been a used bookseller for over 30 years as well as a modernist poet with
a deep abiding interest in the technique of the Cantos.

Because of my interest in poetry, people who shopped my store will tell you
that the selection was always more than passably good.

Among the selection, Pound was always among the top selling 20th century poets
if not number one.

Pound is far fom dead. In fact the opposite is true. All poets of any
seriousness seem to feel they have to reckon with Pound even if it is only to
retreat into simpler and more accessible styles and the self-absorbed
sentiments that seem to be consumptions best testimony.

I've found most of the bitterness surrounding Pound arises from the reader's
inadequacy, but readers he does have. I've had many a meal out of Pound's
labors where I'd starve to death on entire schools that once flourished around
him. Carlo Parcelli

Stoner James wrote:

> I suppose my point is that Pound scholars--academic or not--have a very
> difficult time, indeed, in persuading people who do read poetry (and enjoy
> it), that Pound is worth reading, other than saying, "if you don't like
> him, don't read him."  Your job as "Poundians" should be, at least to a
> large degree, is to bring him out of the muddy depths and into the clear
> blue water, rather than letting his corpse rot in the steel hull four
> miles below the ocean top.  Who really cares about Pound?  Why don't
> people care about Pound?  I would submit that it's because of the elitist
> attitudes represented by many folks on this site.  What really, my fellow
> Pound friends, entices one to want to read Pound?  Your replies are a
> sorry testiment to the fact that 50 years from now Pound will have had a
> wooden stake pounded in his bloodless heart.  If this group, representing
> the true Pound scholars, can give no more than their moving testemonies to
> Pound's greatness as a poet, and nothing else, than indeed why go on.
> Maybe Pound is dead.  Maybe that is what I'm hearing.
>
> I have studied Pound as a side show for some years.  I find much value in
> his work, however, he's difficult and obscure, as you know.  The
> translators can't even translate him well enough to get young people
> interested in him.  My final opinion is that maybe you folks would do
> better to find the value and articulate that value in a way that folks can
> understand it, to get them interested enough so that they will continue
> searching the mud.  Maybe, if on occassion, a golden nugget appeared, we
> might want to go on looking, coming up from time to time to clean our
> lungs, warm our bones, and dive again.
>
> Yes, Emerson (more so than Plato) expressed a poetic and wrote with poetic
> prose.  Emerson's poetry may stink, but his prose is truly poetic, in
> every sense of the word.  Yes, indeed, I prefer the poet philosopher over
> the poet politician (Mr. Pound falls into the latter category.)
>
> How does one unsubscibe from a group that fails to reflect critically upon
> its own activity.
>
> I thank you all for enlightening me to the value of this man's work.  I
> wish you luck.  I will go on without you, but I doubt one man can keep his
> work alive.  I hold little power that way.
>
> Truly, dismayed.
>
> I did not spell check this, what's the use?
>
> James Stoner
>
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