These are my last words on the subject. You can go hang after this.
You remind me of that sad git on Buffalo Poetics who used to regularly
post about Ginsberg's unsavoury aspects, about Ginsberg's demonization
of a poet at a retreat, about Ginsberg's alleged love of small boys.
But whatever this guy said never detracted from the impact that Howl
had - has - on me. Not one little iota. Howl still sends shivers down
my spine. I can still read it aloud and it's raw energy and power will
carry me away. When I read some of Pound's stuff, I get a similar
shiver. I really couldn't give a monkeys if Pound roasted kittens and
ate them for Sunday tea whilst dressed in leder hosen and singing the
Horst Wessel.
My relationship with Shakespeare is complex: I detest the edifice that
he has become in English society, literature and learning. He has
become totemic for the right. He is kept afloat by a lot of public
money. I remember once proposing that a moratorium be called on
teaching and performing his works for a generation or two. I am still
of that opinion. Let the English find their own songs and stories to
tell, rather than rehashing meaning from stories for dead people. On
the other hand, Shakespeare informs my writing. I admire his work but
I do find him suffocating. The writing - when I do read him - I can
warm to.
Roger
On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 8:51 AM, David Bircumshaw
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> Nothing to see here, move on. Old news warmed over for adolescents.
>>
> That's a very good definition of Pound.
>
> The site +is+ a out and out racist oasis and Pound is one of their
> literary gods.
>
> Pound, like a lot of writers of 1875-1914-ish gestation was caught up
> in the myth of Aryan supremacy, of eugenics and the horsemen from the
> Northern Steppes who brought down their rule. It derived from many
> sources, notably Galton, that very flawed genius, and was popularised
> by HH Chamberlain, from where it gained wide currency. Social
> Darwinism influenced it too (Darwin did +admire+ without endorsing his
> cousin Galton's work.
> Psychologically it's linked with attested adolescence, with
> self-fascination that fails to establish adult relation to the
> feminine: Pound gets stuck somewhere between the Venus and Adonis and
> the Rape of Lucrece stages: hence his splatter gun violence, his
> sexlessness, his facetiousness.
>
> The Big Boys of male poetry, Roger, are the one's who learn to grow
> out of that, like that Mr Shakespeare you so detest.
>
>
>
> 2008/6/11 Roger Day <[log in to unmask]>:
>> Nothing to see here, move on. Old news warmed over for adolescents.
>>
>> It occurs to me that, just like Crowley, it's Pound's fascism that
>> makes him interesting. If Pound was a card-carrying member of the
>> jesus cult, then he'd be just another untermensch slaving for an
>> imaginary friend.
>>
>> Roger
>>
>> On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 8:28 PM, David Bircumshaw
>> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>> what Pound and some of the other English language modernists were
>>> really about, underneath the rhetoric, have a look at the below, which
>>> includes an interesting summary of Vorticism. Have a look at the site
>>> it's on too, oh boy
>>>
>>> http://library.flawlesslogic.com/pound.htm
>>>
>>> --
>>> David Bircumshaw
>>> Website and A Chide's Alphabet http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/
>>> The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
>>> Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> My Stuff: http://www.badstep.net/
>> "I began to warm and chill
>> to objects and their fields"
>> Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
>>
>
>
>
> --
> David Bircumshaw
> Website and A Chide's Alphabet http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/
> The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
> Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
>
--
My Stuff: http://www.badstep.net/
"I began to warm and chill
to objects and their fields"
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
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