anielsen:
 
Thank you for making these points... I appreciate the
insights you have offered. You have managed to state
very clearly and simply what I had strived to communicate
to Garrick Davis, re: his views on criticism... The continuing
fallacy of selective emphasis, evidenced in Mr Davis'
replies to Edwards, Morse and myself, makes for short-sighted
criticism (in my opinion) and ultimately robs the art of Poundian
criticism of the richness required to fully appreciate
the scope and legacy of Granpaw's work. One must always
make an inspried leap... A poet's vision must be "added" to
the critic's.
 
Respectfully
Billy Marshall Stoneking
 
 
 
----- Original Message -----
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To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, November 19, 1999 6:55 AM
Subject: Fwd:
 
 
> Burt:  I'm responding directly to you because the Pound listserv started
> bouncing my posts right after our university made some transparent
> alteration to our server --
>
> First a note of caution:  I have not read the Lilla essays yet (but
> will on
> your recommendation); still, I know enough to be deeply suspicious of
> the
> argument that _Being and Time_ "leads us straight to Hitler and to
> National
> Socialism."  This is simply _ad hominem_ and untrue.
>
> Similarly, I'd be a bit careful about the assumption that "whatever
> Pound
> did affected only himself."  This assumes that the people with whom
> Pound
> corresponded and the people who read his works had no material effects
> in
> the world as a result.  That's a limb I wouldn't want to go out upon.
>
> More importantly, you raise some fundamental questions about how we read
> that I think have been given short shrift in the recent list
> discussions,
> and this is what I value most in your message today.  I would liken the
> issues to discussions I find in the works of Patrocinio Schweickart and
> Derrida, neither of whom writes on Pound to my knowledge.  In _The Ear
> of
> the Other_, Derrida makes arguments about our readings of Nietzsche
> that I
> think have crucial implications for reading Heidegger, and Pound.
> Derrida
> rejects the argument that Nietzsche's texts "lead us straight to Hitler
> and
> to National Socialism," but neither is he willing to accept the argument
> that the Nazi reading of Nietzsche is simply and clearly a gross
> misreading.  Instead, he wants us to engage in  readings that can
> account
> for the fact that Nietzsche's texts produce both the Nazi and anti-Nazi
> interpretations.  We must come to understand how both can proceed from
> the
> same texts, and how both are active in our cultural response to the
> texts.
>
> Similarly, Schwieckart, in her 1984 essay "Reading Ourselves," starts
> from
> the question she finds herself confronted with in her continued desire
> to
> read (and to find important) texts that appear to be demonstrably
> sexist.
> "Why do they remain appealing even after they have been subjected to
> thorough feminsit critique?"  She concludes that the particular works
> she
> has in mind continue to call upon her "authentic liberatory
> aspirations."
> While I'd quibble with the use of the term "authentic" here, I think
> she's
> absolutely right that an artist such as Pound continues to appeal to a
> utopian impulse in my reading, an impulse that he so often seems to
> betray,
> and that both the utopian moment and its betrayal are inextricably
> bound up
> in one another.  We cannot separate the beauty and critical acuity of
> Pound
> from its simultaneous undermining.  Schweickert ends by calling for "a
> dual
> hermeneutic" that discloses the text's varied ideological complicities
> and
> "recuperates the utopian moment."  Again, I might argue with her choice
> of
> terms, but I think that any reading of Pound that is to be useful to us
> today must offer us exacty this sort of dual hermeneutic.  The argument
> that Pound was not an antisemite, or that he wasn't antisemitic in any
> way
> that had material consequences simply will not hold up to a full
> reading of
> all that he wrote.  Many on the list seem to be dismissive of serious
> attempts to read Pound's racism and political ideology.  This to my mind
> simply mirrors the errors of those who would dismiss Pound and all who
> read
> him on the basis of his politics.
>
> We are all still struggling with these issues -- I take the same final
> stand that you do -- whatever poetry can be in our time _has_ passed
> through Pound, and must continue to do so.  To understand what poetry
> can
> be in our time, what it is now and might come to be, requires readings
> that
> account for ALL of the mountain.
>
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