Well.

I ought not to have brought Foucault to bear on such a petty moment.  I
understand that now, after a little reflection; I guess I just get sick
and tired of the same vortex of naive-newbie-jingoist-smack-down that
often happens on this list.  People that know little about the ideals
they want to defend are insulted away by otherwise intelligent people,
and no one, I think, is right.

Let me rephrase that: people on the list are absolutely right to attack
the stupidities that are periodically broadcast through these pages,
and the vigor of our conversations is something too valuable to
sacrifice in the name of mollycoddling the ignorant.  However, there is
a pattern that anyone who reads this list must have noticed, one that
does not gladly tolerate dissenting opinions.

I know I should talk about Pound more, as a pretense for whatever else
I'd like to say, or just for "his" own sake.  Charles was careful to
remind me of that, and I suppose I see his point.  On the other hand,
I'm not sure that emulations of Ezra Pound are the sine qua non of good
critique, and I sometimes get a little uncomfortable with the
occasional "WWPD" sentiments.  "What Pound would think of the list?"
comes up at least once a month, during these moments of minor crisis
when a fool is flushed from the Bush where he's hiding and the list's
sharpshooters take him out.  Does it make any sense to ask this
question?  Does it matter what Pound would think?  And who is in a
position to say?

I'll confess that I am not a veteran of Pound studies.  Far from it.  I
joined this list to learn, not to boast, and I have learned much from
it.  In that vein, I don't feel that I am as qualified as others on the
list to know "what Pound would think" or even to know which cantos to
quote at just the right time.  There are others, at it much longer than
many of us, who do those duties quite well.  I've learned that Pound is
often right (whatever that means), first by reading Pound and books
about him, and second by paying attention to these discussions.  I've
also learned however that he is susceptible to hero worship, and that
he would not have minded hero worship in the least.  He praises
Sigismundo; we praise Pound.  Pound (might) think that that is just
fine.  He was not a modest man, from what I've seen about him. (If he
actually was modest, I trust someone will cite something to that effect
soon enough.)

Isn't this something we, or somebody, should criticize?  Not because
Pound is wrong or dangerous or fascistic, but because criticizing is
what thinking people often do?  This list has taught me, in this
context, that a request like mine could be dangerous: the one who
criticizes Pound criticizes Pound's admirers, and Pound's admirers will
not stand for that for very long.  (Quick: someone steal my post-bag.
I've not doubt gone haec traditio.)  So that:

giving the words "order" and "brotherly deference", refusing to speak
of "life after death", I would prefer to stop striking the rock of EP
that it might give forth stronger and stronger epithets with which to
scare away jingoists.  Pound never subscribed to a list like this;
asking whether or not he would have is a(nother) sign that the time is
passing "when the historians left blanks in their writings / I mean for
the things they didn't know".

Charles- what would Pound have preferred me say in place of
disingenuous?

Regards to all-
Jon

On Sunday, February 16, 2003, at 02:06  PM, charles moyer wrote:

>     Dismissing him as disingenuous as opposed to what Pound stood for
> would
> be more appropriate. Discussion on Pound is preferable.
>     Should we continue to look for "a little light, like a  rushlight
> to
> lead back to splendour." -Canto CXVI or else anticipate that the myth
> of
> progress will put out all our lights in time until we find ourselves
> living
> in the horror of a constantly violent world of machines and evil toys?
>
> "a little light
>             in great darkness-" -Canto CXVI
>
>     How about the Cantos as "palimpsest" records of Tradition that have
> survived the historical blackout of the usurious occult and serve as
> these
> little rushlights to guide our way out of this teetering Inferno?
>
> Charles
>
> "A war on truth requires weapons of mass deception." -on a sign at the
> London demonstration
>
>
> ----------
>> From: Jon & Anne Weidler <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: Mea Culpa
>> Date: Sun, Feb 16, 2003, 1:18 PM
>>
>
>> the people who dismiss him as a jingo,
>