I teach Pound in our required junior-level "Western Literary Tradition"
course here at the University of Texas at Dallas.  The students read The
Odyssey, The Aeneid, The Metamorphoses, and The Inferno.  Then they read the
first thirty Cantos.  The Cantos are still formidable, but they make a lot
more sense when seen as a continuation of an epic tradition.

The only change I'm contemplating to that syllabus is taking out Virgil
(since the mini-Aeneid is in Ovid) and adding something by Browning --
perhaps Men and Women.

Cheers!

Tim Redman

-----Original Message-----
From: - Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Dirk Johnson
Sent: Friday, January 03, 2003 12:10 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: American studies


Sounds like a good plan, Charles -- I think you've really got something
there.  I only introduce Pound to people after a lengthy screening
process.  But, yes, it works sometimes.

charles moyer wrote:

>Here, Here or is it Hear, Hear?
>
>            "But in Ealing
>With the most bank-clerkly of Englishmen?"
>
>And the question here of teaching Pound to undergraduates may be best
>answered by maintaining the tradition as it has been with the poison label
>on his works. Nothing excites the imagination more than labeling something
>dangerous or forbidden. And imagine kids -poetry that can get you high!
>After all as it has been pointed out by a recent National Geographic study
>only one in seven (14%) of American youths from 18 to 24 (draft age) could
>find Iraq on a world map. How many do you think could find Pound in a
>library?
>     Ah, "the triumph of the superficiality and the apotheosis of the raw"
>-William James (American pragmatist)
>    Dirk, Do you really introduce men and women to Pound? I found him to to
>be a real conversation stopper long ago. But I'm going to try something
new.
>Upon hearing anything which remotely sounds like American Studies I am
going
>to casually say, "You know Ezra Pound, the poet, possibly could shed some
>light on that subject, but the government has forbidden his books and
burned
>all of them they could find." Well, OK, it wouldn't be exactly true, but
>these are dire times, and we must use drastic methods if American Studies
>are to survive. You know they hate us because we are "free", not because we
>are stupid. Gore Vidal watch out.
>
>-Moyer
>
>"'They were only war casualties,' he said. 'It was a pity, but you can't
>always hit your target. Anyway, they died in the right cause.'
>    'Would you have said the same if it had been your old nurse with her
>blueberry pie?'
>    He ignored my facile point. 'In a way you could say they died for
>democracy,' he said."
>    -from Graham Greene's "The Quiet American"
>
>
>----------
>