Just a rhetorical question: Is this subject really off-topic?
 
For me it is not. EP and James Joyce raised questions about writing that are
still relevant. Is it really possible for a writer now, even a hypothetical
young writer of genius at the fin of this siecle, to approach the novel or
poetry without a heavy wrestle with them? I don't believe so. EP was _the_
avant garde poet of the 20th Century, he was _il miglior fabbro_, and we are
still in the 20th Century, and that influence will carry a decade or two or
three into the next. Well, Bunting said it best [_On the Fly-Leaf of Pond's
Cantos_], and it still applies, I believe.
 
I see Pound as an on-going influence, an impact on the poetry world that has
not yet lost its inertia. The discussion of current practices in the world
of poetry are therefore relevant. To fail to see EP--dead though he be--as a
contemporary _now_, is, I think, to miss something quite true and very
interesting. [EP as a current influencer in politics--except perhaps in
Italy?--is an absurdity. He may occasionally be run up the flagpole of this
person or that group that has a problem, but he's not a political factor now
(if he ever really was).]
 
The dictum, "Make It New", haunts our day; it is part of the background
radiation of our century, the Paiduma. It was the driving force of
Modernism, but EP is the one who gave that force its voice: "Make It New".
That force is still to be seen in the schools of even the ungifted and
unimaginative poets, for instance the L=A=N=G=U=G=E poets, and the followers
of the Beats--who pollute the poetry circuits everywhere, at least here in
the U.S., etc. They haven't the gifts to really *make it new*, so they
imitate those who did with manifestos and jargonistic "artistic" rationales.
That this has its foundation in the Massif that EP is in our little
contintent of poetry seems pretty clear; and it seems part and parcel with
the discussion of EP himself. And it is what he would have preferred, too.
The scholars are needed to elucidate, but Elysian Ezra is for the poets.
 
> ----------
> From:         Richard Caddel
> Reply To:     Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine
> Sent:         Wednesday, November 24, 1999 9:46 AM
> To:   [log in to unmask]
> Subject:      Re: Reading Poetry Aloud
>
> Well aware that this thread is some way off subject for this list, so
> I'll keep it short: I was amazed to talk to some nice, sassy,
> proficient graduates of a wellknown creative writing outfit (which
> shall be nameless) to find that although as students they were
> expected to do frequent writing exercises, and by the end of their
> course it could be expected that they's have done at least three
> poetry readings, no-one ever gave them any clues about voice-training
> or basic reading training which might help them with said readings.
> Seems daft to me, and no-wonder, thus, that it's a rare pleasure to
> find a good reader these days. Sorry, back to the Pound bit.
>
> RC
>