Re Pound and Ginsberg:

Michael Reck is on the record in recent years as a firm believer in
Pound's anti-semitism as fundamental to his (Pound's) habit of mind--and
what difference does the apology make anyway?  Is it even an apology?
Pound grew up in an anti-semitic suburb of Philadelphia, but his own
family seems to have objected.  After all, Homer once rented the house in
Wyncote (or was it Jenkintown) to a Jew when there was an open if
unofficial prohibition against such arrangements! And during the 1880s and
1890s, the suburbs around Philadelphia were filling up with German Jews
fleeing the arrival of Eastern European Jews in the city.  So much for
stupid suburban prejudices!

At any rate, I think that Pound was able to recognize his own
anti-semitism as morally reprehensible and even apologize and yet still
make no changes in his essential world view, one in which the Jew had a
consitutive and therefore troubling role.  Not pay enough attention to the
Hebrew element!  Strange and telling that he didn't realize it was a
question of the kind of attention he paid, not the amount.

There are a half-dozen verifiable apologies and many, many more apocryphal
ones, and none of them, to me, make things simpler.

For what it's worth, Ginsberg reconfirmed the whole story to me when I saw
him browsing a Broadway bookstall in 1998.  And let's not forget the
wonderful photo of their meeting.

Jonathan Gill
Columbia University