Dear Louis, Your reply is both courageous and intelligent. I am heartened by the fact that you found the issue worthy of expending such intellectual energy upon. ==Dan Pearlman At 06:06 AM 12/05/2000 -0500, you wrote: >I don't think it's too far of a stretch, at all, to read Moyer's "parody" >as implicating its reader in anti-Semitic discourse, regardless of whether >or not one agrees with Dan Pearlman. I don't mind in the least rousing >myself from lurkerdom to address this issue, either, since it is of deep >concern to Dan Pearlman. I'm glad I caught the email, which was by sheer >accident (completely out of the loop, not having read posts on this >listserv since early September). > >Browning's lines invoke Nature, the natural world, a natural order. >Charles Moyer's "parody" reverses the idea of a natural order, with the >idea of a social order. More specifically, the implication - here lies the >force of the parody - is that this is a world fallen from grace, a social >dis-order. Moyer transports us to contemporary US of A politics. Instead >of "God," we have Greenspan in his office regulating finance. Instead of >"dew," a pure emanation from Nature after night and after sleep, >suggesting refreshment, rejuvenation, etc., we have "Jew-pearled." Etc. > >Given that Charles Moyer chooses to post such a parody on a Pound >listserv, a listserv whose members one would think would be >extra-sensitive to ways that texts are, or become, racialized, only >confirms, to his discredit, the implication of anti-Semitic discourse that >goes unchallenged in his parody. Imagine if he had posted his poem to a >Browning listserv. There it would appear, I think, as palpably >incongruous, as drawing (perhaps disingenuously, perhaps naively, etc.) on >a negative history of racialization of the Jew. By a curious denial, >however, or by habit, or by sleepy-headedness, it would seem that Charles >Moyer's post is acceptable, "in tune" with Pound, here on the Pound >listserv. Yes, it is in tune with Pound. It is in tune with his legacy of >anti-Semitism. > >Let me just preemptively add as a last comment that while I am compelled >to respond directly and seriously to Dan Pearlman's request, I am not >in the least inclined to respond to any future post from Charles Moyer >that is directly addressed to me -- whether it is in agreement or >disagreement with what I have said here regarding his poem, it doesn't >matter. > >Louis Cabri HOME: Dan Pearlman 102 Blackstone Blvd. #5 Providence, RI 02906 Tel.: 401 453-3027 email: [log in to unmask] Fax: (253) 681-8518 http://www.uri.edu/artsci/english/clf/ OFFICE Department of English University of Rhode Island Kingston, RI 02881 Tel.: 401 874-4659