I agree with you.
Best regards,
                        Dante
 
James Thiele wrote:
 
> In order to be a poet one must necessarily step outside of the contemporary
> norm, he or she must be ab-normal, else he or she would have no perspective
> nor anything to say.
>
> Pound was of course abnormal, insane, if you will, as is every poet who has
> anything useful to say.  Rather than calling them insane, however, which
> carries all kinds of negative freight, I'd prefer to think of them as
> transported outside the quotidian.
>
> If you put Pound in the crowd of his own sort, he seems normal.  Those who do
> not dwell in that land, but rather stand at the border and peer will, of
> course, ponder the  strange antics of that lands denizens and sometimes call
> it genius and sometimes madness, but at no time really understand.
>
> I have had the opportunity to carefully read The Cantos a couple of times,
> and, too, a variety of his other poetry.  I've read his radio talks and
> considerable portions of his prose.  I've read criticism.  I've read
> biographies.  I'm sure the folks on this list have also.  Pound's a genius.
> Clearly the finest poet of his generation.  There have been other mad men:
> Van Gogh, Dali, Picasso, Hemingway, Poe, Borges, Eliot, Lewis, Blake, Shelley,
> Byron, etc., etc., etc.
>
> A "sane" person will not make good art.  They will, rather, be busy doing the
> 9 to 5 routine, making money, mowing the lawn.  They will be critics.
>
> If I had the choice, I'd rather be a poet (I tried for 30 years) than a critic
> (I tried for 10 years).   I became enough of a critic to know I could never be
> a poet.  Now I go to work, make money, mow the lawn....
>
> I apologize for this confessional out of the blue sky of lurkerdom.
>
> Best to all,
>
> Jim Thiele