Dear Pounders,
 
I'm new to this list, and have been lurking around until something
simple came up that I felt qualified to comment on. This may be my
"golden opportunity" to do so, as those of my social class and
second-rate public-school education are wont to often say.
 
In addition to being a working poet who greatly admires EP without
knowing dust about him, I have a doctorate in Jungian studies and, in
addition to teaching creativity (hah!) for twenty years before I retired
to write full-time and stare into space, I picked up pocket money by
being a licensed psychotherapist on the side.
 
Having said all that, I'm not sure what more I can say about EP's
depression except, In my opinion his creativity might very well have
been increased, rather than diminished, had be been on Prozac.
Depression (and I don't mean by that the "blues" or a fleeting bout of
self-pity), as anyone who suffers from it knows, is the robber of
invention, rather than its mother.
 
It's my contention that Pound, like other creative geniuses who may have
suffered from chronic depression, were productive despite their illness
rather than because of it. Let me tell you from personal experience,
"suffering" is a highly over-rated precursor to poetry.
 
 
Best wishes,
 
John Corey
 
Timothy P Redman wrote:
>
> As I have stated before, I believe that Pound suffered from an
> undiagnosed manic-depressive (bipolar) disorder.  I am pursiuing that
> hypothesis in my biography.
>
>                                                 Tim Redman
>
> On Tue, 11 Aug 1998 12:00:04 PDT jpg13 <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > Re Pound's Mental Illness:
> >
> > I wonder if we might move the discussion beyond questions of sanity or
> > insanity, and into much murkier territory.  It seems clear that we can find
> > evidence of both from throughout Pound's career.  The St. Elizabeths
> > nursing logs recording Pound lying down on the road in the winter and
> > claiming that he couldn't go on make it sound like depression, and
> > these days we consider depression  a treatable illness, rather than a lifestyle
> > choice.  Is Pound's depression a reaction to his earlier psychotic
> > periods?  Letters from Pound to Olga in the early 1940s, when he was making
> > broadcasts in Rome, show him constantly exhausted, taking frequent naps,
> > sleeping long hours--again, it could be a sign of severe depression.
> >
> > The question seems to me: what kinds of responsibility accrues to the
> > language act, either over the radio, or in poetry?  Is there a way we can
> > deal with the most eccentric or extreme of Pound's writing without
> > putting it in the literary equivalent of an insane asylum? Then again, as
> > E.P. put it on his arrival in Italy in 1958: "All America  is an insane
> > asylum."
> >
> > I for one would welcome the input of medical professionals out there, if
> > there are any on the list.
> >
> > Jonathan Gill
> > Columbia University
>
> Tim Redman
> School of Arts and Humanities, JO 31
> University of Texas at Dallas
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>
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