Hello Lee lady, and all:
 
As a student in Professor Morse's graduate seminar, I am profoundly grateful
for the lively and well-informed atmosphere of all of our sessions.
Professor Morse has a wealth of information (about Pound, Whitman, and many,
many other poets as well) that he freely shares with a great deal of wit and
with careful attention to detail. His explications of the Cantos are
thorough and thrilling. During this seminar, Morse has provided us with a
rich contextual and multi-dimensional background that includes biographical,
historical, political, and philosophical information that allows us, as
students, access to a greater and certainly to a deeper understanding of the
poetry. This seminar has been a marvelous experience, and I am not saying
this to enhance my grade. I am not worried about grades--I concern myself
with knowledge.
 
I consider Lee Lady's personal attack on Professor Morse, aired on a public
list, to be in poor taste and rather studiously childish.
 
Tia Ballantine
 
----- Original Message -----
From: Everett Lee Lady <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, December 05, 1999 1:19 PM
Subject: Re: Getting things dead wrong
 
 
> >Date:  Sun, 5 Dec 1999 02:16:13 -1000
> >From:  Wayne Pounds <[log in to unmask]>
> >Subject:      Re: Getting things dead wrong
> >
> >From:  Jonathan Morse <[log in to unmask]>
> > >Subject:      Re: Getting things all mixed up
> >             >SNIP<
> >No
> > >economist of any standing has ever paid the
> > slightest attention to Pound's
> > >ideas about money, for instance,
> >
> >Dead wrong. Read Giano Accame, _Ezra Pound
> >Economista_, 1995. Massimo Bacigalupo reviewed it for
> >Pai. (Accame a journalist whose field is economics and
> >cites reputable sources.) The review inspited y.t. to
> >read this book --hasn't anybody else read it?
>
> Since it's in Italian, it's probably not widely available
> in the United States.  Any sort of summary you could post
> here would be welcome.
>
> Even if it were in English, however, and more readily
> available in university libraries in the United States,
> most academics specializing in Pound would probably not
> bother to read it, because as we see by their comments
> in this list, they simply can't be bothered to learn
> the territory.
>
> I don't have a problem with people who claim that the
> only interesting thing about Pound is his poetry and
> literary criticism and that his life and non-literary
> interests can be ignored.  I do have a problem with people
> like Morse, who was actually teaching a graduate seminar
> in biography this semester focussing on Pound (as well
> as Walt Whitman), and who can't be bothered to learn the
> background that would enable them to understand Pound
> in context.
>
> I have a problem with people who look at the Agresti
> letters and only see the 5% which deals with Jews
> since that's the only part they can make any sense of
> because they simply don't know anything about any of the
> books and other things Pound really cared about.
>
> To even talk about "Pound's ideas about money" is to
> show that one has completely missed the point of who
> Pound was.  Pound was not a thinker, he was an enthusiast.
> He had some very acute perceptions, about literature at
> least, and he liked to look at old and obscure books
> and discover things which had been long forgotten, and
> he had a keen intuition (although not always a reliable
> one) in seeing connections that most people had not seen
> before.
>
> But you cannot discuss his works in the way one generally
> discusses the works of thinkers, in terms of the reasoning
> and evidence cited, because Pound does not provide a
> systematic intellectual exposition.  This was not the
> level Pound's mind worked on, and it's one reason so
> many of the ideas he championed (which were not "Pound's
> ideas" but the ideas of others) in the realm of government
> and economics turned out to be so foolish.  (They were
> not so obviously foolish, though, in the context of the
> era in which Pound first learned of them.)
>
> So instead of a reasoned discussion of Pound's ideas in
> the fashion of in which one discusses the ideas of thinkers,
> we see here absolutely childish criticism, such as
> "The fact that Confucianism is worthless is proved by the
> way the Chinese have treated women."
>
> -----
> It is a question not of being happy or fulfilled, but of being on fire.
>  --- Anais Nin
>
> Lee Lady           <Http://www2.Hawaii.Edu/~lady>