At 07:38 AM 9/10/99 -1000, Richard Edwards wrote:
 
> Geoffrey Hill's strange new
>book-length poem, *The Triumph of Love* (Houghton Mifflin 1998/Penguin
>1999), contains the following lines in section (canto?) CXLVI:
>
>"Cursed be he that removeth his neighbour's mark:
>Mosaic statute, to which Ruskin was steadfast.
>(If Pound had stood so, he might not have foundered.)"
>
>Does anyone have any idea what Hill is getting at here?
 
I think Hill doesn't know what he's talking about. Pound would never remove
his neighbour's mark, and never did - he had an enormous respect for history
and all developments in literature (although more for some than for others),
and I don't think that ever changed. Pound's foundering consisted of a
stupid, blind anti-Semitism combined with a life of too much isolation.
Hill's comment is just a cold blast of hot air aimed at nothing but making a
literary reference.
 
Arwin