I hope this gets through. I describe Pound as my favorite and least favortie poet. Nonetheless, I am a Poundian, both intellectually and emotionally and poetically, for all our disagreements and agreements. Sorry about all the contradictions (do I dontradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes. Hey, come one, everyone likes at least one Whitman line. . .) I first got into Pound while taking a Yeats and Eliot class my junior year of high school. I was also, as I am now, listening to a lot of Bob Dylan music (and had gone through never to return the Beatnik Ginsberg phase), and the line in Desolation Row "Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot fighting in the captain's tower" really intrigued me. No, I don't look up all the references in Dylan songs, just as I don't look up all the references in Pound's songs. I was also just beginning to study Chinese, with Daoism as my great inspiration there. And the first thing I read of his was the Kung Canto, XIII. The common interest with disagreements drew me to his poetry, and when I read Hugh Selwyn Mauberley I was in love. It took me a long time to recognize the emotion in Pound in addition to the intellect, but when I did I realized even more why I read and re-read his poems. No, I still haven't read the Cantos fully, I must admit, but I love most of what I've read. I also love his poetic theories--ABC of Reading is one of my bibles. I also hate a lot of the Cantos. Being a Daoist of Jewish descent, how could I really love his hatred of Taozers and his rails against the Protocols? But you love in spite of, not because of. And we all know that if it weren't for EP, there would be no 20th century poetry in any form we know it. Also, as for this whole Ezra in the classroom thing, I know I'm not smart enough to teach Pound and I'm not dumb enough to try. I think a lot of professors feel this way (no, I'm not a professor, just an undergraduate, but I can't forsee ever teaching a class on Pound as Pound). Just like for all the wonderful things I've heard of Finnegans Wake, I know nowhere where it's introduced to the general student. the emotions may be the most important and enduring of any great literary work, but the intellect involved opens only a narrow mail-slot that most packages can't fit through, either not intellectual enough to be taught or too much for the professors to teach. Neither pound nor ferlinghetti are taught, notice. politics notwithstanding. Lucas _________________________ Lucas Klein [log in to unmask] Say it! No ideas but in things. Mr. Paterson has gone away to rest and write. Inside the bus one sees his thoughts sitting and standing. His thoughts alight and scatter William Carlos Williams