Pound was a anti-semitic pain-in-the-ass, and probably a fascist. You
could have mentioned his truly mad belief in some forgotten nutter of
an economist which led him to his theories of usury. Eliot never
re-canted his anti-semitism. Maybe Auden's recanting of his younger
days makes him a better poet? So as to justifying your attack on a
poet via his or hers character, I'd say, meh. So what. Poets are not
nice, ordinary people, they are usually verbose, highly articulate, at
odds with the world. Poets more often than not think that the world
owes them a living all because they can string a few words together.
Poets write and say inconvenient things, believe odd things. In short,
they're hard to get on with. I include myself in these category: I've
unfairly lambasted would-be friends because of some imagined point of
contention over my poetry. I'd point at your own erratic presence on
this and other lists which must testify to something going on.
When does "fact-checking" come into prose or poetry? How does that
undermine *anything*? A problem with the facts? Isn't that called the
human condition? I myself am notorious for conflating three sets of
facts together and coming out with Sunday ... the prosaic isn't
necessarily the "right" facts. So, no, I do not accept any of your
assertions.
I suppose it comes to this, so soon. You don't like prose poetry. It's
as simple as that. You've invested your time and energy in a certain
sort of poetry, and you declaim against the other sorts you don't
like. That is your right, and I would not have it otherwise. I happen
to think other sorts of poetry are equally important and worthy of
attention. Meh, this leads nowhere. But I would rather have said this
than not.
Regards
Roger
On Sat, Mar 29, 2008 at 4:18 PM, David Bircumshaw
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I've just been re-reading The Pisan Cantos prior to writing this, Doug, and,
> as ever before over the last 35 years (when I bought it, price 80p), my
> impression is of a farrago of the brilliant, the wilful, the rambling, the
> majestic, the incomprehensible and the downright objectionable. It is a poem
> of a gifted callow passionate selfless egotist. A profound crank.
> Pound's poetic project too, from A Draft of XXX Cantos onwards, is
> increasingly inseparable from his brand of Fascism, a belief system which he
> never recanted, (I know he did make some remarks in the 1960's regretting
> his antisemitism but his support for the 'twice-crucified' i.e. Mussolini
> never wavered). Prosaic 'fact' in such a belief system is always going to be
> subject to the writer's delusions and prejudices.
> One can go back to the Pound of his London days: in 'Mauberley' the section
> about 'Brennbaum' (The Impeccable) is about Max Beerbohm. The piece is, none
> too furtively, antisemitic. There is more than the one obvious problem about
> this:
>
> Beerbohm wasn't Jewish.
>
> (Beerbohm was of Lithuanian ancestry so some gossip in the London literary
> world implied he was Jewish, as his antecedents were Eastern European)
>
> Pound couldn't get his facts right much of the time so it does call into
> question his imputed ability to incorporate prosaic information into the
> techniques of poetry.
>
> Best
>
> Dave
>
>
>
>
>
> On 28/03/2008, Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> > Depends, but her point was that he got that material, & the concept
> > that such material belonged there, back into poetry; many since have
> > found ways to, indeed, make it work there (as did he, at his best)....
> >
> > Doug
> >
> > On 27-Mar-08, at 10:02 AM, David Bircumshaw wrote:
> >
> > > I don't feel, pace Perloff, that Pound's imagistic and rhythmic
> > > techniques
> > > succeeded in digesting the gobbets and wedges of prose content in The
> > > Cantos.
> >
> >
> > Douglas Barbour
> > [log in to unmask]
> >
> > http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
> >
> > Latest books:
> > Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
> > http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
> > Wednesdays'
> >
> > http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-from-aboveground-press_10.html
> >
> > to rid me of
> > the ugh in
> > thought
> > i spell anew
> > weave the world
> > out of the or
> > binary
> >
> > bpNichol
> >
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> 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/
"She went out with her paint box, paints the chapel blue
She went out with her matches, torched the car-wash too"
The Go-Betweens
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