Tim Romano,

You moved the discussion on a step (beyond 'Censorship & Social Darwinism')
by observing that 'Pound was both an idea-into-action and an
action-into-idea artist'.   Yes, but we need a distinction here:  the poet's
business is to make his poem,  and it is the poem which goes into action.
(One could say: the poet's job is to create the 'idea', and it is the 'idea'
which goes into action--but 'idea' is easily mistaken to mean its mere
abstract, so I prefer to say it is his making which goes into action.)  It
acts, necessarily, in and upon the minds of its readers;  its results,
naturally, will be slow to show up and must change perceptions before they
can affect public policy.  But when the poet would go into action directly,
as Pound did in his prose propaganda, he is not acting as poet.  And he can
act contrary to his poetry, as Pound did in the worst of his Rome radio
broadcasts.  That is, he can unmake his own making.  One man in opposite
modes.  Yet the same motivation behind both.  It is a good puzzle to bemuse
the fixities and definites by which Pound is too readily judged.

There is a note among Pound's papers in the Yale Beinecke Pound Archive in
which he makes the distinction between 'the two sane courses worth
attention'  'for a thinking man not a scientist':  'Art which is search for
an absolute statement, just as absolute as .... a conclusion of Euclid';
and 'action, say political or economic action .... the goodness or badness
lying in proportion to what is possible in particular given conditions'.
[Taken from "Ezra Pound and Europe", ed. Richard Taylor and Claus Melchior,
(Rodopi, 1993) p.89]

This doesn't in the least question your fully warranted statement that Pound
was an 'engaged' poet.  His own phrase for it was 'volitional', having a
clear aim.  The poem has its aim, its politics and all, but its way of going
into action is not that of political activism.

And let's repeat, what several contributors have been maintaining, the
politics of the poetry are one thing, and Pound's prose propaganda is
something else.   To confuse the one with the other serves obfuscation, not
the better understanding of either.

Many thanks for your contributions to the list.

David Moody