On Tue, 28 Mar 2000, Richard Edwards wrote:
 
> Many thanks for this. What is the title of the Berryman book? And why do you
> say it is indefensible?
>
> In asking you to be more specific I perhaps ought to be more specific myself
> about the passage I referred to in case any other list member wishes to
> follow it up. (Yesterday I did not have the book with me). It is on page 50
> of Davie's book *Ezra Pound* (University of Chicago Press 1975) and it goes
> like this:
>
> "But about this poem, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, it is best to be brief. This
> poem is, and has proved to be, the most accessible of Pound's longer poems,
> the one that it is easiest to start with. . . .
 
Berryman's Book is called _Circe's Craft_ (with a subtitle).  My critique
of both Davie and Berryman can be found in a Paideuma article, "Irony and
Common Sense: The Genre of Mauberley" (Spring 1989), which surveys the
critical history of the poem.  Basically, I attack Davie's assumption that
the poem is written in a voice other than the poet's own--a misreading
that has caused widespread confusion about how to read HSM.
 
                                Stephen Adams
                                Department of English
                                University of Western Ontario
                                London, Canada  N6A-3K7
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