Let us not deceive ourselves...
 
A Pound industry, as Mr Davis puts it, pursued without serious purpose
it is a mere hobby...  BUT how can one pursue Pound with seriousness,
leaving unaddressed the complexities explicitly demonstated in his poetry,
letters, and proclamations, and implicitly expressed in his decision to
enter a plea of insanity thus propelling him into thirteen years of
incarceration?
I, too, wanted to avoid this problem of Pound's anti-semitism in my play,
SIXTEEN WORDS FOR WATER, but was forced in the end (by Pound!)
to deal with it!
 
How could Pound the Nazi Jew-baiter write the "Ballad of the Goodly
Fere"?  is, indeed, a very good question.
 
Nevertheless... whether one be an exponent of the so-called "New
Criticism" or any one of the other handful of criticial disciplines, what we
are dealing with is nothing more than an elaborate language game... the
New Criticism has its rules, as does the psycholoigical approach, etc.
One learns these rules then tries to be a good game player (i.e.: stick to
the rules and work out a few, original "moves") Mr Garrick is playing
a different game than some of the others, but it is still a game. I can't
see why he should take umbrage with those indulging themselves
with draughts because he is passionate about backgammon! Unless
his version of backgammon includes a rule for lambasting those who
do not play it!  Strange! That sounds a little bit like fascism... but I
am sure Mr Davis is anything but a fascist!
 
Stoneking (poet)
 
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: Garrick Davis <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, November 16, 1999 2:27 AM
Subject: Re: Pound & Fascism
 
 
>     The never-ending discussion of Pound's fascism and anti-Semitism,
which
> this listserver indulges in and which is the sole focus of Poundian
criticism
> lately, raises several questions.
>
>     1. What important insights or critical judgments has such an approach
> discovered?
>
>     I would maintain very few. Such an approach all too often leads to
> primitive moralizing. Either Pound was an idiotic crank or a truly evil
man,
> so the theory divides. How could Pound the idiotic crank also be Pound the
> brilliant inventor of 20th century poetry? How could Pound the Nazi
> Jew-baiter write the "Ballad of the Goodly Fere"? No answers are
forthcoming
> from these moral critics. Need it be added that when a critical approach
> leads neither to a richer nor more just understanding of the poetry, it is
> bankrupt?
>
> A distinction should be made here: many of the participants to this
> listserver seem fascinated by Pound the man, but indifferent to Pound's
> poetry. This I infer from their letters, which are invariably biographical
> and obsessed with marginalia. One can either dismiss this industry as
> superfluous or complement it as scholarship, though of a pedestrian
variety.
> But it is a mere hobby if pursued without serious purpose. Poetry is,
after
> all, the only reason Pound remains of permanent interest.
>     Such academic seashell-collecting has always struck the average reader
as
> pointless. It is worse than this, I fear; it is actively harmful, in so
far
> as the accumulation of useless facts and disconnected insights helps to
> obscure their superiors: those useful facts and insights which contribute
to
> the formation of literary judgment. A thousand mediocre books are quite
> capable of hiding, on the dusty shelves, a dozen good books from their
proper
> readers: a phenomenon that any visitor to a research library can attest
to.
> Gresham's Law (that phony currency drives out the good) surely exists
today
> and applies to our publishing lists and libraries.
>
> 2. What conclusions can be drawn from this obsession with Pound's fascist
and
> anti-Semitic sympathies?
>
> The underlying assumption concerning this basically moral (and, I should
add,
> rather traditional) approach to criticism is that to understand the work
one
> must understand the man. Biographical facts will lead to textual insights.
> This critical approach was banished, all too briefly, by the New Criticism
in
> the early decades of this century. And all the objections to this
approach,
> as formulated by that movement, remain valid to this day. It has been used
> admirably by a few critics, and disastrously by many others. Is it sheer
> coincidence that the Golden Age of modern criticism (an era which
contained
> Eliot, Pound, Blackmur, Tate, Ransom, Auden, to name a very few) was an
age
> which distrusted the moral/biographical/historical approaches to criticism
> and preferred close textual analysis of the work instead?
>
> This leads to a last, bitter truth: many of our academic scholars have
> produced defective criticism (harnessed, paradoxically, to excellent
> scholarship) because they are ignorant of the most basic critical
approaches.
> That is, our universities produce literary scholars unfamiliar with the
great
> American critics.  How many of our Poundian critics have read our great
> critics of poetry like Poe, Mencken, James, Santayana, Tate, Eliot, Pound,
> Jarrell, Auden,  Blackmur, Jarrell, Wilson, and Winters...not to mention
our
> good critics like Trilling, Warren, Wimsatt, Matthiessen,  Burke, Crane,
and
> Brooks? How many of our scholars have even heard of Saintsbury or
Gourmont?
> Having read none of the great criticism of the past century (or of any
> century for that matter) what wonder that they reproduce the stupidities
of
> mediocre critics?
>
>     Perhaps our scholars (including some on this listserver) should ask
> themselves what any further elucidation of Pound's political/moral/social
> sympathies will contribute to the understanding of his poetry. I would
think
> this to be, for the critic or scholar of poetry, a matter of first
principles.
>
> Regards,
> Garrick Davis
> Contemporary Poetry Review
> (www.cprw.com)
>