Ditto... I've heard this from professors more
times than I'd like to remember...
 
Billy Marshall Stoneking
 
 
 
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: Lucas Klein <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, August 30, 1999 5:34 PM
Subject: Re: Pound Outside the Academy
 
 
> At 04:35 PM 8/30/99 -0400, you wrote:
>
> >I dare say that this attitude is not restricted to journalists. I've
heard
> >much the same from English professors at major universities (or the
> >variant, "who's that poet that helped Eliot with The Waste Land and later
> >went insane?")
> >
> >The fact that Pound's carries the double curse of being "difficult" and
> >being politically incorrect offers a handy excuse to anyone who doesn't
> >want to read him.
>
> this is quite true.  Most people are quick to dismiss Pound.  And then
> there are the poets.  Last week at the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference,
Alan
> Shapiro said there was no more important poetic movement in the twentieth
> century than Imagism, and quoted a poem of his to indicate near-perfect
use
> of I don't remember what, sadly.  And another poet there who'll be
teaching
> a class on Poetics at Texas this fall told me about how he'll use Pound as
> a way to introduce Chinese poetry and poetics to the class.  And yesterday
> I read an article in some journal or other that applauded the seriousness
> of Pound's love of all poetic traditions as a model for contemporary
poets,
> mentioning that without him etc etc etc.  I suppose Pound achieved
> something of what he wanted.  The artists recognize him as one of the
> antennae of our race.  To hell, then, with the bullet-headed many.
> Journalists and a lot of professors may have a hard time with his work,
but
> he comes as close as I can imagine to being a poet's poet; no one who's
> ever written lines down seriously would dare consider much of his work
> a-tonal.
>
> Lucas
>