I may be mistaken,but I believe "stale creampuffs" was the term Pound used to descibe HIS OWN early Pre=Raphelitish poems. It certainly had nothing to do with Ashbery, and would have been wildly inappropriate.

On Thu, 27 Nov 2003, sylvester pollet wrote:

> Is it kind to call Ashbery "a stale creampuff" on Thanksgiving? Bon
> appetit! Sylvester
>
> At 2:09 PM +0900 11/27/03, Wayne Pounds wrote:
> >I think this query deserves a better response. Being familiar with the
> >writer's native culture and language, let me restate what I understand of the
> >query. Then I'll try to respond, and I hope others will join me.
> >
> >>I am now reading Ashbery's poems, which puzzle me a lot. Did Pound
> >>appreciate Ashbery or recognize him as a young poet from whom important work
> >could be expected? Or was >he outside of Pound's interest?
> >
> >The answer to your first quest, I believe, is no. I think that by the time
> >Ashbery's poetry began to appear in print, Pound had little interest in young
> >poets. He thought he had done enough to recognize and encourage young talent
> >during the three decades before WWII. During and after the war, he believed
> >he had more important things to do.
> >
> >Nor do i think Pound would have appreciated Ashbery's work if he had seen it.
> >In his early years in London and Paris, he appreciated surrealism as an
> >avant-garde movement, but by the thirties he felt that surrealist art was
> >"stale creampuffs" and anyone still doing it was merely recycling the
> >contents of some ancestral trunk in the attic.
> >
> >That's all that comes to mind right now. Perhaps someone else could comment?
> >
> >Wayne Pounds
> >
> >Tim Romano wrote:
> >
> >>  Yes, to a "wide, tepidly meandering" stream.
> >>  Tim Romano
> >>
> >>  At 11/25/03 10:23 AM +0900, =?iso-2022-jp?B?GyRCRU9KVT8uRnMbKEI=?= wrote:
> >>  >-Please give me some hints:
> >>  >I am now reading Ashbery's poems which puzzle me a lot. Did Pound
> >>  >appreciate, or expect, him? Or was he out of Pound's interest? Does
> >>  >he bring, or keep, American poetry and the English Poetry to some
> >>  >stream?
> >>  >
>