Charles, I enjoyed your post. And, congratulations on your proud TDY
during WWII. To realize the author, who so inspired you, was in an
insane asylum must have been a jolt, since you can pinpoint the location
and year of the event. That's why I wrote of the importance of any
scholarship. To shed objective light on Pound is the only important
result. There are so many questions unanswered. Perhaps Pound would have
been the famous poet he always desired to be, if he wasn't so political.
Perhaps, if he never went to the Italy, he would have won the attention
of Europe, the attention on which he thrived. Who knows?

I was touched by your response to his poetry, and was reminded that it
was my own response, after reading Cantos I so many years ago: "WHERE
has this guy been all my life?" Thanks for the memory. Tom NJ

-----Original Message-----
From: - Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Tom White
Sent: Saturday, January 25, 2003 3:02 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Pound & Politics


Charles:
Not overly reluctant confession. This is my 80th year. First read Pound
one afternoon at Harvard's Lamont library in 1950. It only took an
afternoon to "get the message." Read a lot of the prose and a little of
the poetry. Absolutely stunning. WHERE has this guy been all my life? By
then I was a college grad, attending B.U. grad school, vet of WW II Navy
as C.O. of small ship. Had heard of Eliot in college, not Pound. Now
he's in Loony Jail? Whatinell is going on? Been trying to answer that
question for the last 52 years with many a detour and many a stall. But
what thou lovest well is thy true heritage, the rest is dross, no? Tom

> From: charles moyer <[log in to unmask]>
> Reply-To: - Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine
> <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2003 07:40:32 -0500
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Pound & Politics
>
> Interesting that a question concerning Spengler woke up this list and
> the answer may yet put its blinking Fafnir eyes back to sleep. On the
> emotional question of anti-Semitism someone has wisely pointed out
> (and that someone he is Jewish himself, maybe Finkelstien said this)
> that an anti-Semite used to be someone who hates Jews. Now it is
> whoever Jews hate. Of course we may yet see the greatest of all
> ironies finally be recognized, i.e. that there is either no such thing

> as a Jew or we are all Jewish. As for AIPAC getting what it wants the
> irony there is that sometimes that turns out to be the worst thing
> that can happen to one. I like Pound for the same reasons Tom likes
> him as an apostle of beauty and justice. I also agree with Tom on
> government ("grass with wind above it must bend"). Just sad to see
> that they're all my age now and such miserable psychological wrecks. I

> would guess that Tom like me has reached that age at which Confucius
> said, "At sixty was ready to listen to them." i.e. "the orders of
> heaven". Still overstepping the t-square though as is here evidenced.
>
> "But if you're carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain't gonna make

> it with anyone anyhow." Remember?
>
> Charles
>
> ----------
>> From: Tom White <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: Pound & Politics
>> Date: Sat, Jan 25, 2003, 12:03 AM
>>
>
>> Richard:
>> The "typical strategy" you describe seems to be still the approach of

>> people deploring "Jewish influence," as in Hollywood and pop culture
>> generally. The Net is waxing hot these days on all that.
>>
>> And I have long given over the fond illusion that anything good can
>> come from governments, particularly large central governments. Pound
>> was caught up in that illusion to a faretheewell, as H.L. Mencken was

>> not, as Mark Twain was not, and as Whitman was (I guess) to some
>> extent although not altogether; but we live post-Rothbard and
>> concurrently with Hoppe, and we now know that all states must engross

>> and enlarge and steal and rampage and kill until they achieve what it

>> is in their nature to seek: the death of the society that gave them
>> birth and permitted them to grow.
>>
>> I love Pound's poetry and especially his indomitable insistence that
>> beauty and justice, damn it, SHOULD exist; but I now look elsewhere
>> for anything approaching a solution to the social problem. Since it
>> appears none exists, then it is back to tending one's own garden and,

>> well, reading Pound, as once upon a time it was said, just before the

>> end, that Byzantium still read Homer. Tom White
>>
>>> From: Richard Seddon <[log in to unmask]>
>>> Reply-To: - Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine
>>> <[log in to unmask]>
>>> Date: Wed, 22 Jan 2003 10:35:46 -0700
>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>> Subject: Re: Pound & Politics
>>>
>>> Tom:
>>>
>>> An excellent resource for experiencing the anti-Semitism of the
>>> early 20th century is "The International Jew" published by the
>>> Dearborn Press.  Henry Ford purchased the Dearborn Press as a
>>> newspaper organ for his views on what was then called "The Jewish
>>> Question".  A typical strategy of those articles was to separate the

>>> rich banker apostate type Jews from the Jewish race and from
>>> observing Jews .
>>>
>>> Mussolini was a Socialist originally and Pound was an avid supporter

>>> of Guild Socialism.  Pound's objection to Marx was that Marx wanted
>>> to control the economy and society indirectly through control of
>>> capital whereas Pound and the Social Credit types wanted to control
>>> the economy and society directly through control of the money.
>>>
>>>
>>> Rick Seddon
>>> McIntosh, NM