Well, Derek. This begs the question: what was it that you agreed with in
my original post? Or was that just a sop and your "stylist" thing was a
dig because you found the post unsettling. Signed Confused.

derek hardy wrote:
>
> Yes,
>
> I love his stuff. But I wouldn't let him in my house.
>
> One day grown-up people will be able to say  Pound is a magnificent writer
> but he was also an ignorant vicious egocentric bastard.
>
> Degsey
>
> >From: [log in to unmask]
> >Reply-To: Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine
> >  <[log in to unmask]>
> >To: [log in to unmask]
> >Subject: Re: Pound and the very real world of poetry
> >Date: Sun, 21 May 2000 13:33:41 EDT
> >
> >perhaps to the surprise of no one, I'd like to associate myself with Carlo
> >Parcelli's observations.  it's tiresome to read studies of Pound's life,
> >which usually amounts to excoriating exposes of his many faults, by writers
> >whose only contribution to the study of Pound is an attempt to diminish his
> >poetic achievement  -- in my view, the most significant achievement in
> >poetry
> >in the 20th century, at least in the english speaking world -- by viciously
> >denigrating him as a human being; I share Parcelli's view that this is
> >principally because the poetry of Pound is beyond them.
> >
> >joe brennan....
> >
> >In a message dated 05/21/2000 12:05:35 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> >[log in to unmask] writes:
> >
> ><<
> >  I'd like to get right to the point here. While I admire and appreciate
> >  much of the scholarship on Pound that appears on this list, I find the
> >  criticism as regards poetry, that is the creation and praxis of poetry,
> >  to be in an important sense utterly without relevance. Although it is
> >  indeed fine and useful (utile to borrow David Jones' term) to perform
> >  these exegetical autopsies on Pound, we should never lose sight of the
> >  poet and poetry that gives us such rich ground to work with in the first
> >  place. This IS the legacy of what I refer to as High Modernism which I
> >  somewhat eclectically extend to include Joyce, Eliot, Zukofsky, Jones,
> >  Bunting, Olson, Duncan, Dorn, Metcalf and few others as well as Pound,
> >  myself and Joe Brennan. Our poetry, in contradistinction to the
> >  solipsistic drivel or pseudoexperimental anagrams that come out of the
> >  academy and virtually all the publishing houses large and small, has
> >  substance; so much substance (a poem that can contain history e.g.) that
> >  many people earn a living mining the moderns and a few more such as
> >  myself try to continue to explore the potential of the form(s).
> >  Pound's poetry (his POETRY!!!) has placed demands on the scholars on
> >  this list that has caused them in casual email conversation (show me an
> >  equvalent list on some darling of Random House or Simon and Schuster) to
> >  far surpass the level of discourse about current poetic movements
> >  anywhere in any venue. That's because there is so much in Pound. So, in
> >  spite of Pound's becoming a further academic opportunity, why aren't you
> >  people out pushing for this obviously rich and most intelligent of
> >  poetic forms to be carried on by succeeding generations? Are you
> >  frightened of being tarred by his anti-Semitism, his Fascism, his
> >  Confucianism? Do you secretly hate him but see his work as a sound
> >  'business' opportunity? Huh?
> >  I got interested in Pound when I was an undergraduate studying with
> >  Pound's co-translator of greek drama, Rudd Fleming. Subsequently I did a
> >  years independent study on Pound culminating in a poem in the style of
> >  the Cantos called Ontology of Accident. Their is no fascism,
> >  anti-semitism or reactionary Confucianism in my poem yet its still
> >  unmistakably in the style of the Cantos. My thesis committee was
> >  Fleming, Reed Whittemore and Hugh Kenner--Himmler was dead and Edward
> >  Lansdale declined the invitation. I've read Pound's work and the huge
> >  body of criticism for years even as I refined my own approach. But other
> >  than Joe Brennan I've had to do it in a vacuum. Brennan and I are not
> >  hacks. We are decades long practitioners with deep reading agendas and
> >  original epistmological foundations much like Pound and all the other
> >  great high-moderns. Like Pound are approaches may not be "right"
> >  whatever that means, and because were so far outside established
> >  practice they might seem eccentric to the conservative inside. But WE
> >  are the true heirs to the high-modernist tradition, a plethora of poetic
> >  techniques, insights and sources so rich that it has barely been tapped
> >  at the imaginative and creative level though so much ink has been
> >  spilled at the critical level.
> >  I find it useful to continue to read the exegesis on Pound but after
> >  many books, articles and email my enthusiasm is somewhat diminshed. Its
> >  diminished because it should now be obvious to anyone that Pound and his
> >  compatriots and heirs were (are) onto something; that is a poetic form
> >  that simply isn't a reflection of middle class self-absorption or a
> >  self-absorbed reaction to it that professes to be a radical alternative
> >  like Language poetry. In fact, I hesitate to mention the two above
> >  alternatives at all, because in a reasoned and interested poetic
> >  universe they would be so diminished and irrelevant next to the work of
> >  Pound or Joyce that it would be considerd ridiculous to mention them.
> >  But I have to, because now this is pretty much all we've got poetically.
> >  Stupid movements and whiny free verse now rule poetry and as a
> >  consequence poetry has become largely a joke. Pound and the other
> >  moderns for all their faults so far transcend this that poets who work
> >  in their style are excluded by editors to stupid to know what the
> >  authors doing and fellow poets too intimidated to offer them a place at
> >  the table. Beyond that you have an audience that is made up of a mildly
> >  refined soap opera set usually comprised largely of other poets or
> >  poetry wannabees who insist on a stultifying etiquette that precludes
> >  any engagement with the real world.
> >  Many of you people have done the work. Many of you people are on
> >  faculties and witness first hand the mind numbing idiocy that passes for
> >  poetry at the academy nowadays. I'm sorry to say that some of you while
> >  familiar with the larger possibilities of high-modernism, have made
> >  minor reputations writing post-navel doggerel for the current market.
> >  Well, I suggest you begin to understand the value of Pound and the
> >  modernists before the terminally mediocre utterly take over the poetic
> >  world and the squeaking that is poetry today becomes a well deserved
> >  silence of tomorrow.
> >  POUND IS A GREAT POET. And he's put food on the table of a lot of
> >  academic families. That's no small thing. Think about it. If he was
> >  really as worthless as your criticisms imply why do I have over 200 book
> >  length critical studies of the man on my shelf. To me, Pound and the
> >  other high-modernists are a living legacy, a legacy I carry on with
> >  every book I read and every word I pen. I hope someday a couple of you
> >  people will begin to understand a little of what I'm saying here.---
> >  Carlo Parcelli
> >
> >   >>
>
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