No problem, Tony. I appreciate your views, and as I said, his political views and his rabid anti-semitism were just bottom of the barrel. But genius works in strange ways. And according to the Pound biography I read, whose title and author escapes me at the moment, Pound renounced his hateful views in old age, and he was very sorry for them. Whether this is true or not, who knows. I do know that age has a mellowing effect, and Pound did live a long time.
To really get at Pound, to appreciate his skill as a poet (apart from all the stuff that makes one want to despise him), you need to read his first three or four books. In them there's a lot that reads like juvenalia, and a lot of truly awful experimental, trendy (for the times), Imagist stuff; but amidst all that there are quite a few precious gems, at least to my ear.
I have a book by Arthur Sze, The Redshifting Web, and I sang his praises at my former workshop board, PFFA, many years ago. He's a wonderful poet, and yes, I would agree a much finer example of a human being than Pound.
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