perhaps to the surprise of no one, I'd like to associate myself with Carlo Parcelli's observations. it's tiresome to read studies of Pound's life, which usually amounts to excoriating exposes of his many faults, by writers whose only contribution to the study of Pound is an attempt to diminish his poetic achievement -- in my view, the most significant achievement in poetry in the 20th century, at least in the english speaking world -- by viciously denigrating him as a human being; I share Parcelli's view that this is principally because the poetry of Pound is beyond them. joe brennan.... In a message dated 05/21/2000 12:05:35 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [log in to unmask] writes: << I'd like to get right to the point here. While I admire and appreciate much of the scholarship on Pound that appears on this list, I find the criticism as regards poetry, that is the creation and praxis of poetry, to be in an important sense utterly without relevance. Although it is indeed fine and useful (utile to borrow David Jones' term) to perform these exegetical autopsies on Pound, we should never lose sight of the poet and poetry that gives us such rich ground to work with in the first place. This IS the legacy of what I refer to as High Modernism which I somewhat eclectically extend to include Joyce, Eliot, Zukofsky, Jones, Bunting, Olson, Duncan, Dorn, Metcalf and few others as well as Pound, myself and Joe Brennan. Our poetry, in contradistinction to the solipsistic drivel or pseudoexperimental anagrams that come out of the academy and virtually all the publishing houses large and small, has substance; so much substance (a poem that can contain history e.g.) that many people earn a living mining the moderns and a few more such as myself try to continue to explore the potential of the form(s). Pound's poetry (his POETRY!!!) has placed demands on the scholars on this list that has caused them in casual email conversation (show me an equvalent list on some darling of Random House or Simon and Schuster) to far surpass the level of discourse about current poetic movements anywhere in any venue. That's because there is so much in Pound. So, in spite of Pound's becoming a further academic opportunity, why aren't you people out pushing for this obviously rich and most intelligent of poetic forms to be carried on by succeeding generations? Are you frightened of being tarred by his anti-Semitism, his Fascism, his Confucianism? Do you secretly hate him but see his work as a sound 'business' opportunity? Huh? I got interested in Pound when I was an undergraduate studying with Pound's co-translator of greek drama, Rudd Fleming. Subsequently I did a years independent study on Pound culminating in a poem in the style of the Cantos called Ontology of Accident. Their is no fascism, anti-semitism or reactionary Confucianism in my poem yet its still unmistakably in the style of the Cantos. My thesis committee was Fleming, Reed Whittemore and Hugh Kenner--Himmler was dead and Edward Lansdale declined the invitation. I've read Pound's work and the huge body of criticism for years even as I refined my own approach. But other than Joe Brennan I've had to do it in a vacuum. Brennan and I are not hacks. We are decades long practitioners with deep reading agendas and original epistmological foundations much like Pound and all the other great high-moderns. Like Pound are approaches may not be "right" whatever that means, and because were so far outside established practice they might seem eccentric to the conservative inside. But WE are the true heirs to the high-modernist tradition, a plethora of poetic techniques, insights and sources so rich that it has barely been tapped at the imaginative and creative level though so much ink has been spilled at the critical level. I find it useful to continue to read the exegesis on Pound but after many books, articles and email my enthusiasm is somewhat diminshed. Its diminished because it should now be obvious to anyone that Pound and his compatriots and heirs were (are) onto something; that is a poetic form that simply isn't a reflection of middle class self-absorption or a self-absorbed reaction to it that professes to be a radical alternative like Language poetry. In fact, I hesitate to mention the two above alternatives at all, because in a reasoned and interested poetic universe they would be so diminished and irrelevant next to the work of Pound or Joyce that it would be considerd ridiculous to mention them. But I have to, because now this is pretty much all we've got poetically. Stupid movements and whiny free verse now rule poetry and as a consequence poetry has become largely a joke. Pound and the other moderns for all their faults so far transcend this that poets who work in their style are excluded by editors to stupid to know what the authors doing and fellow poets too intimidated to offer them a place at the table. Beyond that you have an audience that is made up of a mildly refined soap opera set usually comprised largely of other poets or poetry wannabees who insist on a stultifying etiquette that precludes any engagement with the real world. Many of you people have done the work. Many of you people are on faculties and witness first hand the mind numbing idiocy that passes for poetry at the academy nowadays. I'm sorry to say that some of you while familiar with the larger possibilities of high-modernism, have made minor reputations writing post-navel doggerel for the current market. Well, I suggest you begin to understand the value of Pound and the modernists before the terminally mediocre utterly take over the poetic world and the squeaking that is poetry today becomes a well deserved silence of tomorrow. POUND IS A GREAT POET. And he's put food on the table of a lot of academic families. That's no small thing. Think about it. If he was really as worthless as your criticisms imply why do I have over 200 book length critical studies of the man on my shelf. To me, Pound and the other high-modernists are a living legacy, a legacy I carry on with every book I read and every word I pen. I hope someday a couple of you people will begin to understand a little of what I'm saying here.--- Carlo Parcelli >>