Pound's post Mauberly poetry is not that accessible to those who are not serious students of art and literature (I think it is only accessible to pretty committed and creative folk--academic or otherwise). This means Pound is inaccessible to nearly everyone--including the many erudite and well-heeled readers of the Post. And we are talking about a review in a newspaper, for peat's sake. Would Carolyn See have been in the right had she told her audience that the world knows, reads, appreciates, studies Pound? In this highly unpoetic age? They do not--yet that does not in itself qualify them as brutes, or qualify See as a brute for missing what many of us here would agree is a tremendous value in the poetry of Pound.
        And Pound's writing IS elitist, with a populist strain. He would bring everyman up to the higher learning and action, would develop in him a great sensibility--so that all the world would be avoiding those public fountains and byways along with Pound and Callimachus. It is an idealist elitism, and the argument against it is reasonable. That is, how hard should a person have to work to unlock the meaning of a poetic expression? How much homework do?
   For all that, the movie Pulp Fiction, for example, worked in a kind of simple prismic or ideogrammic way. I tend to think it would not have been produced as it was without Pound or his Cantos coming first. And lots of people liked that movie. Maybe the modern world is slowly becoming more Poundian. But the emphasis is on slowly.
 
>>> Joe Brennan <[log in to unmask]> 08/30 8:46 PM >>>
In a message dated 8/30/99 8:37:17 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
 
<< It always struck me as elitist snobbery... a kind
 of intellectual showing off, as in "see how many languages I know" ...
 aimed at other people who could devote their lives unravelling puzzles
 so they, too, could show off their erudition. >>
 
 
it's hard to think of a less generous reading of pound, and of those who read
pound for the erudition to be found in his work.  the people I know who're
interested in pound do not fit the unkind description noted above.  nor do I
think that many of us have spent the best part of a lifetime just to show off
what we've learned; as a matter of fact not very many people are interested 
in what we do.  this type of message exudes a not so profound
anti-intellectual bias, which is a little surprising to find on this list.
apparently Bill thinks that the best defense of Carolyn See & the Post is to
espouse ignorance.
 
joe brennan...