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Subject:
From:
Daniel Pearlman <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
- Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Wed, 6 Dec 2000 11:00:45 -0500
Content-Type:
text/plain
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Dear Louis,

Your reply is both courageous and intelligent.  I am heartened by
the fact that you found the issue worthy of expending such
intellectual energy upon.

==Dan Pearlman

At 06:06 AM 12/05/2000 -0500, you wrote:
>I don't think it's too far of a stretch, at all, to read Moyer's "parody"
>as implicating its reader in anti-Semitic discourse, regardless of whether
>or not one agrees with Dan Pearlman. I don't mind in the least rousing
>myself from lurkerdom to address this issue, either, since it is of deep
>concern to Dan Pearlman. I'm glad I caught the email, which was by sheer
>accident (completely out of the loop, not having read posts on this
>listserv since early September).
>
>Browning's lines invoke Nature, the natural world, a natural order.
>Charles Moyer's "parody" reverses the idea of a natural order, with the
>idea of a social order. More specifically, the implication - here lies the
>force of the parody - is that this is a world fallen from grace, a social
>dis-order. Moyer transports us to contemporary US of A politics. Instead
>of "God," we have Greenspan in his office regulating finance. Instead of
>"dew," a pure emanation from Nature after night and after sleep,
>suggesting refreshment, rejuvenation, etc., we have "Jew-pearled." Etc.
>
>Given that Charles Moyer chooses to post such a parody on a Pound
>listserv, a listserv whose members one would think would be
>extra-sensitive to ways that texts are, or become, racialized, only
>confirms, to his discredit, the implication of anti-Semitic discourse that
>goes unchallenged in his parody. Imagine if he had posted his poem to a
>Browning listserv. There it would appear, I think, as palpably
>incongruous, as drawing (perhaps disingenuously, perhaps naively, etc.) on
>a negative history of racialization of the Jew. By a curious denial,
>however, or by habit, or by sleepy-headedness, it would seem that Charles
>Moyer's post is acceptable, "in tune" with Pound, here on the Pound
>listserv. Yes, it is in tune with Pound. It is in tune with his legacy of
>anti-Semitism.
>
>Let me just preemptively add as a last comment that while I am compelled
>to respond directly and seriously to Dan Pearlman's request, I am not
>in the least inclined to respond to any future post from Charles Moyer
>that is directly addressed to me -- whether it is in agreement or
>disagreement with what I have said here regarding his poem, it doesn't
>matter.
>
>Louis Cabri

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