Tom,
I don't know that Pound regarded Eliot as "spiritually dead"; the nickname
suggests a poet-persona whose voice has a disembodied quality--  the voice
of a poet who  is "playing dead" -- holding his own severed head in his
hand, as it were. This quality is one that William Carlos Williams did not
like at all; he refers to Eliot as "frozen" or "sub-zero" or something like
that--I can't remember his exact words or where he says this. But In
_Paterson_ where the frozen lettuces or cabbages are tossed off the bridge
and smash onto the frozen river below, I think Williams must be dealing
with Eliot.
Tim Romano


At 02:50 PM 1/25/03 -0500, you wrote:
>Interesting, how TS Eliot's nickname was Possum, one known to Pound, and
>here it is on the listserv. The quote you gave us from EP is great. Did
>Pound view Eliot as spiritually dead? I know Pound edited "The
>Wasteland." Or, was it more of a friendly shove? Tom NJ
>
>-----Original Message-----
>
>"Mr. Eliot who is at times an excellent poet and who has arrived at the
>supreme Eminence among English critics largely through disguising
>himself as a corpse once asked in the course of an amiable article what
>'I believed'."
>-- E.P., Credo (1930)