"Pound scholarship as it is represented by this list can be a
cold place indeed... "
 
So it would seem, Ms Graham... & more's the pity.
 
As to your question: "what area of scholarship (or life,
come to that) isn't a boys' club?"
 
Could I suggest: Pintupi/Luritja women's business in
the western desert of Central Australia?  A shame
our literary proclivities seldom reach as far as a
culture whose primary "texts" are aural, whose poetry
and epic myths are for the ears, not the eyes.
 
Vide: the Wandjina passages in the Pisan Cantos...
Grandpaw had an inkling, but not the resources or
contacts to see the full implications of what
Frobenius' pupils had dumped in his lap...
 
Stoneking
 
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: Sarah Graham <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, September 13, 1999 10:09 AM
Subject: Re: A sociological observation
 
 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jonathan Morse <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: 10 September 1999 02:16
> Subject: A sociological observation
> >Just out of curiosity: are there any women on this list? I've been a
> >subscriber for a year or so, and in that time I can't recall a single
> >contribution posted by a woman.
> >Does that observation seem accurate, colleagues? If it is, do you suppose
> >it might be worth speculating about?
>
> Well, I'm here, and I'm female, and I suspect that I'm probably in the
> minority on this list. Whether that makes Pound scholarship a "boys'
club"or
> not, I don't know, though my (mischevious) temptation is to ask: what area
> of scholarship (or life, come to that) isn't a boys' club? I suppose a
club
> will be judged on whom it allows to join (a nod to Groucho Marx required
> here) and how it treats its members and I must say that this list is not
> always the most welcoming of (virtual) places. I asked a question recently
> about Omar Pound, just trying to confirm a fact hinted at in a book
review,
> and was widely attacked for raising trivial gossip - though a few members
> did answer the question and presumably everyone  who wasn't interested
> either way simply kept quiet. Over the weeks that followed, more than one
> 'scholarly discussion' nose-dived into name-calling, often provoked by
> seemingly uncontroversial questions or observations. None of which
explains
> why Pound scholarship seems to be male-dominated, but it does suggest that
> the club constituted by this list has a particular group 'personality',
> which may or may not accord with the individual personalities that make up
> the membership; Pound scholarship as it is represented by this list can be
a
> cold place indeed. As to the popularity of Pound, well, I've been working
on
> H.D. and Pound for the last couple of years and the response I receive
when
> someone (male or female) finds out about my project is always 'H.D. -
> interesting; Pound - no thanks'. The reasons are usually cited as
> ideological or that the poetry is simply too complex (with a subtext that
> unravelling the complexity doesn't repay the time and effort required) -
and
> these are comments from post-graduates or scholars already at work in
> universities. Perhaps this is a British phenomenon, but it doesn't seem to
> apply to H.D. or Williams or Stevens (or even, to an extent, Eliot). One
> tutor here teaches a course that includes H.D. and Pound along with other
> 'moderns' but she tells me that the (undergraduate) students "don't like"
> Pound nearly as much as the others, a feeling she agrees with and
(possibly)
> communicates to the students.
>
> Anyway, I'd be very interested to hear any responses list members may have
> to offer on these comments. That Pound scholarship is male-dominated is, I
> think, a fact (if you can produce a short list of work on Pound by women,
> then I think that proves the point that it is the exception) and I'd like
to
> know why. I suspect that his popularity as a subject for study (by men or
> women) may be in decline, or at the very least not noticeably increasing;
> again I don't know why and I may only be seeing the British picture - EP's
> work is hard to get here and his presence on poetry courses (such as there
> are) pretty minimal. But it doesn't take much to push a writer back into
> fashion, and that could easily happen with Pound.
>
> Sarah Graham
>