I see the problem in a somewhat different light. For me, its not so much
that people ignore the classics but they ignore the material within their
own culture that produces classics. And this includes the working poets.

To claim that currently working poets ignore the classics gets you into at
least anecdotal trouble. They offer rewrites of Homer like Walcott and
translations of a Canto from Dante, or a splash of Pushkin or El Cid, Wang
Wei, Li Po, Tu Fu with the aid of a 'native' speaker or dozens of
translations from 'important' living poets. So mainstream poets as well as
those on the margins can make a case for their own committment to the
'classics' and they do often credit Pound among others as establishing
translation among poets if only because they are eager to put their own
personal stamp on the classic work while avoiding adverse criticism aimed at
the result.

Of course, scholars would demolish most of what was done to the classics in
the name of comtemporary poetics. But, like the Pound list, the scholars
don't bother with what the practicing poets are doing. Pound was pilloried
by the scholars for his Propertius and Catullus as well as his approach to
the Chinese ideogram and its primitive.

I can't imagine the positive pedogogic effect that some of the scholars on
this list would have upon the assumptions of the poets/teachers/instructors
operating out there if they offered correctives to some of the nonsense that
is propagated concerning Pound and Modernity in general as well as other all
serious works of literature on the active poets lists. The same could be
done for Joyce et al where you hear from people who teach other people at
the University level blither on that Joyce was just playing a joke on the
reader when he wrote Finnegans Wake. I try and often succeed to counter some
of this if only because some of the original statements are so absurd.

Finally, the irony for anyone interested in Modern literature is the
question of subject matter. Modernist poetry being written today goes
begging because the poets, the public, and specialists e.g. scholars don't
know/have been misinformed about the very world they operate in. This is one
of the major topics in the great modernist work of Joe Bennan as it was for
Ed Dorn.  If they don't know or understand the forces that shape their
existence they are certainly not prepared to engage long imaginative works
which are often critical of those forces. Rhetoric, polemics and parody are
as close as you get. Even from a technological standpoint, they act and
write as though their world had come about "gli umidi" e.g. has no history.
Carlo Parcelli

Stoner James wrote:

> A good topic for a poem:  The hermits grocery store!
>
> Few people have read the Cantos.  Obviously, the allusion is difficult.
>  People don't read this kind of poetry anymore.  If they do they are
> the erudites like the people on this list.  In fact, I often lament the
> fact that my own poetry cannot be understood nor taken seriously
> because people are not grounded in the classics. Pound is a classic but
> most people like fast food in a fast paced society.  It is true that
> literature must be easily accessible and digestible for people to
> "tolerate" it.  Most people who get a Ph.D. in Literature are finding
> out that literature is rarely taught anymore, they can't find jobs.
> The comp and rhet people have taken over and Dante and Vergil (and
> Pound, Wilbur, Eliot) have been purged from the curriculum.  Because
> the public doesn't have a firm grounding in the classics, allusions are
> now made to Nike, McDonalds, and Steven King.  Yes, we are the hermetic
> types.  Somebody has to keep this stuff alive until Rome falls, once
> again.
>
> Stoner, the Ascetic
>
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