At 04:35 PM 8/30/99 -0400, you wrote:
 
>I dare say that this attitude is not restricted to journalists. I've heard
>much the same from English professors at major universities (or the
>variant, "who's that poet that helped Eliot with The Waste Land and later
>went insane?")
>
>The fact that Pound's carries the double curse of being "difficult" and
>being politically incorrect offers a handy excuse to anyone who doesn't
>want to read him.
 
this is quite true.  Most people are quick to dismiss Pound.  And then
there are the poets.  Last week at the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, Alan
Shapiro said there was no more important poetic movement in the twentieth
century than Imagism, and quoted a poem of his to indicate near-perfect use
of I don't remember what, sadly.  And another poet there who'll be teaching
a class on Poetics at Texas this fall told me about how he'll use Pound as
a way to introduce Chinese poetry and poetics to the class.  And yesterday
I read an article in some journal or other that applauded the seriousness
of Pound's love of all poetic traditions as a model for contemporary poets,
mentioning that without him etc etc etc.  I suppose Pound achieved
something of what he wanted.  The artists recognize him as one of the
antennae of our race.  To hell, then, with the bullet-headed many.
Journalists and a lot of professors may have a hard time with his work, but
he comes as close as I can imagine to being a poet's poet; no one who's
ever written lines down seriously would dare consider much of his work
a-tonal.
 
Lucas