>I don't think it will take ten years. My son is sixteen, writes >fiction and>poetry, reads Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Burroughs. He thinks Pound is a>fossil. to each his own... i *becamse* fascinated with pound when i was sixteen. however, three years later, i'm grasping his writing better... partially because i'm in a school where i can actually *study* his work, and partially because of mental and emotional maturity. honestly, i consider myself someone who is still learning how to read. i personally need to read poems a few times before i can grok them, and they're richer to me each time i go back. but i'm a strange bird in that respect...i agree with joe aheam about the effect of mtv and modern culture. in a poetry workshop i took this past year, the majority of the students resented works that required serious thought, background knowledge, etc. i think we're used to having so much information, from so many different forms of media, right at our fingertips, that we get really whiny when we have to work to understand something. after reading plath's "fever 103" in my poetry workshop, one of my fellow students said that if a poem is going to be that long, it needs to have an [expletive deleted] or an [expletive deleted] in it to keep his attention. (no, i did not rip his heretic tongue out). again, i'm a strange bird. i *liked* working to try understanding things like "hugh selwyn mauberly." i meet a lot of people who are enthusiastic about the beats, but rarely anyone who has even read pound. i can see robert kibler's point, about pound's influence on modern culture. my modern poetry teacher pointed out that what's really "out there" and avante-garde NOW will be digested and incorporated into mainstream culture later... such is the poetic cycle. if i understand my history correctly, then pound's pushing imagism paved the way for important developments in modern poetry. i haven't come across any poets right now who write "pure" imagism (i'm hardly an authority on poetry "right now," though!), but hasn't it had a in impact, both subtle and profound? i live in chicago, where there are oodles and gobs of poetry readings etc. i don't know if it's just that i'm older now, or if it's actually a cultural thing, but every year i've met more people who write poetry. however, it seems that there are more people in my age group who *write* poetry than those who read it... nikki _____________________________________________________________________ You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail. Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com Or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]