Charlie, see below. Also, John Tytell (Ezra Pound: The Solitary Volcano)
and C. David Heymann (Ezra Pound: The Last Rower) mention Angleton
briefly in their biographies. During his visit to the States in 1939,
Pound apparently traveled to New Haven to meet with Angleton who was
then publishing Furioso at Yale with the poet and Williams biographer,
Reed Whittemore.
More interesting to me is that Angleton gave testimony in 1943 about
Pound's broadcasts and his fondness for Il Duce. This would have been at
a time when A. had already been recruited into the OSS. The U.S,
intelligence communities undoubtedly have files on Pound that might
yield new info.
According to Heymann, A.'s Furioso published Pound's "Introductory Text
Book" in their first issue. Occasionally, I see old Furiosos around.
Sorry, my memory was so faulty earlier. What's more, Reed Whittemore
taught at the University of Maryland and still lives in College Park. I
know Whittemore and knew John Pauker, later an editor of Furioso, poet
and former VOA propogandist, but the Washington connection escaped me
this afternoon. My leftist politics does not coincide with the cold war
liberalism of the Paukers and Whittemores and I sought as a young man to
extricate myself from this most Washington of literary 'genres'. CP


FURIOSO (from Yale Univ. Rare Books and Manuscripts Library)

Furioso was founded by two Yale undergraduates, James Jesus Angleton and
E. Reed Whittemore, Jr. Angleton had met
Ezra Pound in Italy in the summer of 1938, and by the beginning of 1939
Pound was writing enthusiastic letters of advice as
"padre eterno or whatever" of the "mag." With Pound's encouragement, the
first issue of Furioso appeared in June of 1939,
with contributors including Horace Gregory, E. E. Cummings, Richard
Eberhart, John Peale Bishop, James Laughlin, and
Pound himself. The issue opened with a letter of encouragement from
Archibald MacLeish, and also contained William Carlos
Williams' "The Last Words of My English Grandmother."

The magazine appeared twice more in 1940 and once in 1941, publishing
more works by the above authors and others
including John Wheelwright, Dylan Thomas, Mary Barnard, Theodore
Spencer, and Wallace Stevens. Williams' "To Ford
Madox Ford in Heaven" appeared in the third issue; the fourth featured
John Peale Bishop's "August 1940," Archibald
MacLeish's "The Spanish Dead," and several poems by Marianne Moore,
including "Spencer's Ireland."

A notice enclosed with the fourth issue informed subscribers that "at
least half our editorial board (one of us) is to be drafted.
Just how much poetry will be...accepted, rejected in Camp So-and-So is a
bitter question with a doubtful question mark." In
fact, both editors saw service, and only one issue appeared between 1941
and end of World War II.

Furioso reappeared in the Fall of 1946, with the editorial board of Reed
Whittemore, Jr., Howard Nemerov, William R.
Johnson, John Pauker, and Ambrose Gordon, Jr. While the board underwent
several changes over the next few years,
Whittemore remained the principal editor until the final issue in 1953.
Until Fall 1949 the magazine continued to be published
from New Haven; in that year Whittemore accepted a teaching position at
Carleton College, Minnesota, and Furioso moved
with him.

The postwar Furioso continued to publish poetry, including works by such
authors as Weldon Kees, Peter Viereck, William
Meredith, Richard Ellmann, Howard Nemerov, Josephine Miles, Richard
Wilbur, Vernon Watkins and W. S. Merwin. It also
began a regular series of book reviews, often of new works of criticism;
and a "Department of Culture and Civilization," which
ran short columns, often satirical. Increasingly, the editors accepted
short stories as well, including works by William Faulkner,
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Wayne Carver, R. V. Cassill, Paul Goodman, and
Robie Macauley, and longer critical essays by Edmund
Wilson, Robert Fitzgerald, and Wayne C. Booth.

According to Whittemore, the magazine never had over 600 subscribers,
"having two-three contributors for every subscriber,"
and consistently lost money due to rising publication costs. In 1947
Whittemore and the board attempted to found a Poetry
Book Club, which would offer new volumes of verse to members. The club
offered three volumes: Weldon Kees' The Fall of
the Magicians, Howard Nemerov's The Image and the Law, and William
Meredith's Ships and Other Figures. It was soon
apparent, however, that the club was a financial failure, and the
editors discontinued it. The magazine also experimented with
offering joint subscriptions with other little magazines, including
Tiger's Eye, but found this to be both unprofitable and
time-consuming. The final issue of Furioso appeared in Spring, 1953.

DESCRIPTION OF THE PAPERS

The Furioso papers document the publication of a "little magazine"
between its inception in 1939 and its cessation in 1953.
The files span the dates 1938-1951, with the bulk of the material dating
from 1946-1949.