Yes,

I love his stuff. But I wouldn't let him in my house.

One day grown-up people will be able to say  Pound is a magnificent writer
but he was also an ignorant vicious egocentric bastard.

Degsey


>From: [log in to unmask]
>Reply-To: Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine
>  <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Pound and the very real world of poetry
>Date: Sun, 21 May 2000 13:33:41 EDT
>
>perhaps to the surprise of no one, I'd like to associate myself with Carlo
>Parcelli's observations.  it's tiresome to read studies of Pound's life,
>which usually amounts to excoriating exposes of his many faults, by writers
>whose only contribution to the study of Pound is an attempt to diminish his
>poetic achievement  -- in my view, the most significant achievement in
>poetry
>in the 20th century, at least in the english speaking world -- by viciously
>denigrating him as a human being; I share Parcelli's view that this is
>principally because the poetry of Pound is beyond them.
>
>joe brennan....
>
>In a message dated 05/21/2000 12:05:35 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
>[log in to unmask] writes:
>
><<
>  I'd like to get right to the point here. While I admire and appreciate
>  much of the scholarship on Pound that appears on this list, I find the
>  criticism as regards poetry, that is the creation and praxis of poetry,
>  to be in an important sense utterly without relevance. Although it is
>  indeed fine and useful (utile to borrow David Jones' term) to perform
>  these exegetical autopsies on Pound, we should never lose sight of the
>  poet and poetry that gives us such rich ground to work with in the first
>  place. This IS the legacy of what I refer to as High Modernism which I
>  somewhat eclectically extend to include Joyce, Eliot, Zukofsky, Jones,
>  Bunting, Olson, Duncan, Dorn, Metcalf and few others as well as Pound,
>  myself and Joe Brennan. Our poetry, in contradistinction to the
>  solipsistic drivel or pseudoexperimental anagrams that come out of the
>  academy and virtually all the publishing houses large and small, has
>  substance; so much substance (a poem that can contain history e.g.) that
>  many people earn a living mining the moderns and a few more such as
>  myself try to continue to explore the potential of the form(s).
>  Pound's poetry (his POETRY!!!) has placed demands on the scholars on
>  this list that has caused them in casual email conversation (show me an
>  equvalent list on some darling of Random House or Simon and Schuster) to
>  far surpass the level of discourse about current poetic movements
>  anywhere in any venue. That's because there is so much in Pound. So, in
>  spite of Pound's becoming a further academic opportunity, why aren't you
>  people out pushing for this obviously rich and most intelligent of
>  poetic forms to be carried on by succeeding generations? Are you
>  frightened of being tarred by his anti-Semitism, his Fascism, his
>  Confucianism? Do you secretly hate him but see his work as a sound
>  'business' opportunity? Huh?
>  I got interested in Pound when I was an undergraduate studying with
>  Pound's co-translator of greek drama, Rudd Fleming. Subsequently I did a
>  years independent study on Pound culminating in a poem in the style of
>  the Cantos called Ontology of Accident. Their is no fascism,
>  anti-semitism or reactionary Confucianism in my poem yet its still
>  unmistakably in the style of the Cantos. My thesis committee was
>  Fleming, Reed Whittemore and Hugh Kenner--Himmler was dead and Edward
>  Lansdale declined the invitation. I've read Pound's work and the huge
>  body of criticism for years even as I refined my own approach. But other
>  than Joe Brennan I've had to do it in a vacuum. Brennan and I are not
>  hacks. We are decades long practitioners with deep reading agendas and
>  original epistmological foundations much like Pound and all the other
>  great high-moderns. Like Pound are approaches may not be "right"
>  whatever that means, and because were so far outside established
>  practice they might seem eccentric to the conservative inside. But WE
>  are the true heirs to the high-modernist tradition, a plethora of poetic
>  techniques, insights and sources so rich that it has barely been tapped
>  at the imaginative and creative level though so much ink has been
>  spilled at the critical level.
>  I find it useful to continue to read the exegesis on Pound but after
>  many books, articles and email my enthusiasm is somewhat diminshed. Its
>  diminished because it should now be obvious to anyone that Pound and his
>  compatriots and heirs were (are) onto something; that is a poetic form
>  that simply isn't a reflection of middle class self-absorption or a
>  self-absorbed reaction to it that professes to be a radical alternative
>  like Language poetry. In fact, I hesitate to mention the two above
>  alternatives at all, because in a reasoned and interested poetic
>  universe they would be so diminished and irrelevant next to the work of
>  Pound or Joyce that it would be considerd ridiculous to mention them.
>  But I have to, because now this is pretty much all we've got poetically.
>  Stupid movements and whiny free verse now rule poetry and as a
>  consequence poetry has become largely a joke. Pound and the other
>  moderns for all their faults so far transcend this that poets who work
>  in their style are excluded by editors to stupid to know what the
>  authors doing and fellow poets too intimidated to offer them a place at
>  the table. Beyond that you have an audience that is made up of a mildly
>  refined soap opera set usually comprised largely of other poets or
>  poetry wannabees who insist on a stultifying etiquette that precludes
>  any engagement with the real world.
>  Many of you people have done the work. Many of you people are on
>  faculties and witness first hand the mind numbing idiocy that passes for
>  poetry at the academy nowadays. I'm sorry to say that some of you while
>  familiar with the larger possibilities of high-modernism, have made
>  minor reputations writing post-navel doggerel for the current market.
>  Well, I suggest you begin to understand the value of Pound and the
>  modernists before the terminally mediocre utterly take over the poetic
>  world and the squeaking that is poetry today becomes a well deserved
>  silence of tomorrow.
>  POUND IS A GREAT POET. And he's put food on the table of a lot of
>  academic families. That's no small thing. Think about it. If he was
>  really as worthless as your criticisms imply why do I have over 200 book
>  length critical studies of the man on my shelf. To me, Pound and the
>  other high-modernists are a living legacy, a legacy I carry on with
>  every book I read and every word I pen. I hope someday a couple of you
>  people will begin to understand a little of what I'm saying here.---
>  Carlo Parcelli
>
>   >>

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