Anny: I am not trying to undo the impact of Pound's literary influence. If they took the skin off many of a torso on this list, there would be, at least, one rib named "Pound". I understand the compassion to forgive for many on the basis of his literal generosity and gifts.
 
 However, I think it remains important to not rug over the other points I made. It - the consequences - lets too much off the hook, in my opinion. 
 
 By the way, my message never came up on 'received' messages. 
 
 Stephen
 
 
 

Anny Ballardini <[log in to unmask]> wrote: I respect your positions.

With this introduction I would like to say that I did study Pound and I met
his daughter several times, she lives something like 40 minutes from here.
My father was in the Bulge in the 2nd World War.

I think my position is quite delicate when talking of antisemitism, Pound
and the 2nd WW, also because I live here, and my grandfather was sent to
Siberia as a prisoner of the First World War when his ideas were simply
poetic and humanitarian.

Pound was a close friend of Zukofsky, he helped Marianne Moore, Joyce -by
taking away from himself, and the entire company. Without Pound we would not
have T.S. Eliot, nor many others.
I respect the man and kneel in front of his knowledge. He has to be read
in-between the lines and lived on Italian soil, better if on European soil,
and even here with a lot of imagination since by now over half a century has
passed by.

He paid for what can be at best defined a 'delirium of power.'

I love his daughter and have come to love his poetry.
Poets like Charles Olson, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Zukofsky,
Guy Davenport, and the same Ginsberg have forgiven him. Pasolini interviewed
him when he finally reached Italy after being released from St. Elizabeth.

Contradictions persist but they are the binding element of our human nature.
Besides that I am sure that Ezra Pound was no tame lamb.
Here is what I thought I should say in this moment.

On Thu, Feb 14, 2008 at 8:55 PM, Stephen Vincent 
wrote:

> It is interesting (I think) to consider what would have happened to
> Pound's work if he had not been determined to be insane, and that he had not
> have received the Bollingen prize for consequences of his war time
> actions.(?) Jung & Bollingna's somewhat twisted relationship with the Nazis
> chez Switzerland - is it also a factor here??  By Eliot et al insisting on
> the work's aesthetic pre-eminence (like pre-what? Pre-genocide support?),
> did they manage to subvert the consideration/valuation of politics as an
> implicit part of a genuine poetic practice and criticism. (The 'apolitical'
> - albeit conservative new critics - in ascendance in the late forties were
> certainly happy when the court's ignored the politcal tragedy of Pound, as
> well as their own willful ignorance of  anti-semeticism, and royalism of
> Eliot.     Somehow, aren't these same folks that would ignore, Zukofsky,
> Reznikoff, Niedecker and Oppen - no doubt for the presence of 'political
> dirty wash'???
>
>  Then, how long is it going to take to this country's justice system to
> face the 'pre-emptive war crimes', including the practice of Torture,  of
> Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, & etc??  Yes, they have been behaving, too, as if
> "insane" - and many, many have died as a consequence, etc.
>
>  In the meantime, Happy Valentines Day & Love to all!
>
>  Stephen
>
>
>
>
> Gabriel Gudding  wrote: On this day (for me here at -6
> GMT it's still "on this day") -- On this
> day in 1946 Ezra Loomis Pound, who, in worldwide radio broadcasts,
> advocated killing "big kikes" in a "pogrom from the top" and said "it
> might be a good thing to hang Roosevelt and a few hundred yidds," was
> declared insane by a jury and sentenced to reside in St. Elizabeths
> Hospital.
>
> Two years later he would be awarded the first annual Bollingen Prize, on
> whose ten person panel T S Eliot served, who said of himself, "I have no
> objection to being called a bigot myself."
>
> The jury made this statement: "The fellows are aware that objections may
> be made to awarding a prize to a man situated as is Mr. Pound.... To
> permit other considerations than that of poetic achievement to sway the
> decision would destroy the significance of the award and would in
> principle deny the validity of that objective perception of value on
> which civilized society must rest." (quote from Richard Sieburth's
> fulsome introduction to /The Pisan Cantos/)
>
> Jed Rasula writes, "What was crucial was the preservation of the
> administrative security system that had assumed custodial control of
> poetry (not just Pound's poetry)...." (APWM, 114)
> --
> --
> http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/
> http://rhodeislandnotebook.blogspot.com/
>



-- 
Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html
I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing
star!