<shallow, dogmatic, and combative.>

Well, these are certainly words I've heard used to describe Pound. So

<He seems to think he's Ezra Pound incarnate. Can it be true?> Perhaps 
it is. Especially when its apparent someone's assessment is based on 
nothing more than bruised feelings.

Ad hominem attacks don't mean much to me because most people if (and 
this is rare) get but a glimmer of my true subject matter they bristle 
and hate fills their being and presumably colors their judgment of the art.

They also bristle at the "ecumenism of sources," the erudition and the 
leaps of thought. They think I'm trying to show off and let me know in 
no uncertain terms that they hope my poetry never becomes popular.

One guy told me he'd rather kill himself than see my work gain a wide 
audience. What a compliment!

They also don't like Pound for the same reasons plus the obvious e.g. 
his fascism and anti-semitism. I catch a lot of collateral damage as 
well as immediate dismissal from that.

The only place I can read with a positive audience in DC right now is 
open mike nights at Busboys and Poets on 16th St. Its really
a Spoken Word and hip-hop venue and I'm usually the only white male 
reading.  I guess the combination of looking and sounding like such an 
odd duck (like a ex-tunnel rat that eats at Arby's) and my radical 
politics stuns the large audience into acceptance. I also have a booming 
voice and my colorful vocabulary is culled from the Johnson and Nixon 
presidential transcripts.

At my initial reading I broke the ice with a story about another reading 
where I caused a riot. I told the Busboys and Poets audience that though 
I admit to being guilty of causing some fisticuffs and articles being 
hurled, there were mitigating circumstances. The first was that I simply 
opened with a long poem that began with a quote from Diogenes of Sinope, 
the Dog. The quote is  "The only place to spit in a rich man's house is 
in his face."  I said the second mitigating circumstance was that I read 
the poem in Bethesda, a pseudo-wealthy white enclave in Maryland. I 
found it comforting that the good people of Bethesda would physically 
defend their right to participate as low level functionaries in fucking 
up the world.

Busboys and Poets' Langston Hughes room has a triptych along the wall 
behind the stage with images of Martin Luther King, Gandhi and the Dalai 
Lama. I bring a substitute triptych with heroes more to my taste and set 
it up onstage--Mao, Malcolm X and Fidel Caatro. That's a fuckin' crowd 
pleaser too. No lie. KR CP



KR, CP

P.S. DC is a madhouse, no doubt. I call it Satan's Anus.

Alphaville Books wrote:
> Dirk, you've got to have confidence, even arrogance in what you do, or 
> in the existing atmosphere you simply won't have the stamina to do it. 
> Mont. and Sedder weren't bullying? Its all about risk and conviction. 
> KR, CP
>
> Dirk Johnson wrote:
>> Dear list members,
>>
>> I would appreciate it if someone would send me something brilliant 
>> and imaginative written by the alphabooks guy. I seem to have 
>> overlooked it and am always looking for additional brilliant writing.
>> He makes claim to having produed some, but I must have lost my 
>> investigative touch because I can't find anything written by him that 
>> isn't shallow, dogmatic, and combative. He seems to think he's Ezra 
>> Pound incarnate. Can it be true? Or is he actually Napoleoon? Is the 
>> resemblance merely one of place? Surely the simple fact that he's 
>> (apparently) in a madhouse doesn't make him Pound.
>>
>> Thank you in advance.
>> Dirk
>>
>> P.S. Breaking up fights is hazardous. Keep clear.
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
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>>   
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