See the just released Anthology of Modern American Poetry (Oxford
University Press, 2000), edited by Cary Nelson. A web site in support of
this project is available at:
 
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps
 
Undoubtedly many new students of poetry will encounter Pound and Pound
criticism through this vehicle. Among the Pound materials on offer here
are "A Retrospect," some pages from Blast, and transcripts of two of
Pound's broadcasts.
 
The site itself is an interesting resource for anyone interested in
Pound's work. The relevance to this thread should be obvious. If you
teach, love, or hate the work, you will likely find yourself in the
position of discussing the politics. Some elucidation, contextualization
has become an increasingly unavoidable responsibility for the Pound
scholar. At issue in this thread is that few of us are prepared to
discuss his politics, and yet we must because the information is now
there for new readers. The discussion here of Pound and Fascism allows
me to consider the information that I have from new angles; and while it
does not allow me to make a pronouncement, it does allow me to direct a
student's attention and my own toward a variety of compelling
intersections related to the "new" and that other process of "making it
new." The poetry can not be separated from the situation: he was an
inspired man, a generous man, an intemperate man, and a Fascist. How one
negotiates that ideogram has much to do with how one will negotiate much
of the modernist canon, for that canon cannot be isolated from the
history of modernity with which it had an often antagonistic relation,
the instance of Pound's work being the most notable of many.
 
Don Wellman