So I've been reading for my comprehensive exams, and one of the periods
I'll be tested on is the so-called American Renaissance.  (The other
two are Modern American Poetry, natch, and Marxist & Post-marxist
Theory, in case you were wondering, which I'm sure you weren't).  For
this reason I've just finished Moby-Dick, some Thoreau essays, some
Emerson (which I did not enjoy so very much as some might expect), The
Blithedale Romance, etc. etc. etc.  One fantastic book I'd love to
recommend to anyone interested in this period is American Hieroglyphics
by John Irwin.  It's too complicated to summarize here; I'll just say
that it's about the impact and implications of the decoding of Egyptian
hieroglyphs on American antebellum writers.

So I've just started Leaves of Grass (the slim, indie 1855 edition, not
the bloated sell-out 1892 Deathbed edition), and was thinking about
EP's famous "pact":

I make a pact with you, Walt Whitman--
I have detested you long enough.
I come to you as a grown child
Who has had a pig-headed father;
I am old enough now to make friends.
It was you who broke the new wood,
Now is a time for carving.
We have one sap and one root--
Let there be commerce between us.

I know very little about this poem.  I don't know its date of
composition (though I'm sure I can find out) and I don't know its
conditions of composition.  The speaker has "detested" Whitman "long
enough", and is "old enough now to make friends".  What was it, I
wonder, that put Whitman in the detestation heap to begin with, and
what was it that Pound later found valuable enough about him to
recommence "commerce", and even to assert a kind of genealogical
identity between himself and WW, having "one sap and root"?

My instinct is to say that Pound dismissed WW along with the rest of
"Victorian" verse, as useless, encumbering, dead weight.  But that
seems too thin to be an explanation, and I'm wondering if anyone has
any real insights about this.  Is WW the "pig-headed father" the
speaker mentions?  Does the speaker propose to carve WW's "new wood",
or is he saying something more generic, that WW exposed new directions
in poetry that someone like EP might pursue in his own way?  In short,
how did WW influence EP?

I see interesting traces of the famous "anxiety of influence" at work
here.  Has anyone ever seen Harold Bloom attend to this poem?  I'm
pretty sure that Bloom isn't crazy about Pound and doesn't place him
high in his Grand Pecking Order of the Western Canon, but I'm not
entirely sure.  At the very least, we can see an interesting
transfiguration of a literary predecessor, from being an antagonist to
being an ally.

Goodbye to those dearly departed ones.  And thank you Mr. Moyer for
being so persistently droll and entertaining.  The link you left about
weapons sales was most illuminating, and upsetting, and I appreciate
your keeping us informed.

Regards to all,
Jon