[James Brancheau]

I wouldn't be too much at odds-- I do disagree with 1 a bit and the Chinese lit guys I know here are generally impressed. But what do they know? Truth is, I've never been wowed by Pound's own work, which I doubt you've ever cared enough to seriously consider, Michael. Pretty influential guy though. And, at his best, without an agenda.

[Bill Carpenter]

He seems to define certain outer limits, a lighthouse warning of deadly rocks. If at times a deluded monster, still our monster, an American poet trying to accomplish something. That is probably why Frost et al. went to bat for him, no doubt at considerable risk to their reputations. [But a cultural appropriator -- scary stuff!] If he means nothing to you, so much the better for you. But how not to identify with his passion for poetry, for Dante, for example? Is it all pretentious B.S.? I don't think so. If I had never heard of him I would still respect the eccentric, ambitious Cantos, even while thinking it was marred by consisting 2/3 of irritating prose. As for the other 1/3, Pound could write free verse like no one else. Most free verse sounds like notes for a future poem to be worked up at leisure. Pound's sounds finished. To coin a phrase, my two cents.

[Michael Juster]

James, actually I have read Pound very carefully in several attempts over the decades--biographies & criticism too. I probably own more books by & about Pound than most people here.

I don't think you have any reason to be dismissive about my reading.

[Bill Carpenter]

Excellent Michael. You have done the work. I guess for me the Cantos are like Blake's big prophetic poems. I wish he had done them differently.

He is an enjoyable literature teacher. Maybe he should stayed home and inspired students.

[Catherine McDonald]

Originally Posted by Bill Carpenter

If at times a deluded monster, still our monster, an American poet trying to accomplish something. That is probably why Frost et al. went to bat for him...

Actually, it was less intellectual and more personal. He went out of his way to help many writers, some of whom were struggling at the time, like a certain Irish writer.

No doubt Eliot, James Joyce, William Butler Yeats, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, H.D., Ernest Hemingway, Ford Madox Ford, and Marianne Moore would have produced interesting and innovative work whether they had known Pound or not, but Pound’s attention and interventions helped their writing and sped their careers. He edited them, reviewed them, got them published in magazines he was associated with, and included them in anthologies he complied; he introduced them to editors, to publishers, and to patrons; he gave them the benefit of his time, his learning, his money, and his old clothes.

http://www.openculture.com/2013/08/h...race-1943.html

At this low point, James Joyce received a letter from a total stranger.
“Dear Sir,” it began, “Mr. Yeats has been speaking to me of your writing.”

http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...n-fiction.html

[Andrew Mandelbaum]

Originally Posted by James Brancheau

Couldn't download from my phone, Andrew, but got the idea. That Woody Allen is almost certainly a paedophile doesn't affect my judgement of his work. Allen got me through a particularly rough patch in my life. I Do Not Agree With Mr. Pound's Views. And how many times am I going to have to say that now? And why should I?

You don't have to repeat it for me, bud. I get ya. I was only funning. I wanted to fully explore the limitations of dance swagger to mitigate certain unfortunate tendencies.

As for my original "meh", I do like some of his early works. Some of them more than I care to admit. Still the idea some folks have that it was just some odd little political aside is bothersome. Maybe if some helpful fellow poet would have broken his nose the first time he Jew-ed his politics he could have been righted. There is entirely too little blood when brilliant minds start to wander into bad magic. Bring the fisticuffs if I ever start waxing poetic about hate. Cantor lives nearby. I heard he was a golden glove or some such.

[Michael Juster]

Michael is too tough for the Newburyport street gangs.

[Michael Cantor]

I confronted them with a list of their adjectives and modifiers and they ran like rabbits.

[James Brancheau]

You're absolutely right, Michael. I shouldn't have jumped to conclusions. And good chance his work's fresher in your mind than mine as it has been some years (we cover a poem or two of his in my intro to western lit class, but that doesn't count). Ok, Andrew, thanks for letting me know. I wasn't sure. I took a fascinating class on Imagism as a freshman in college. The professor actually met the guy (I'm sure he's long since passed on). No mention of Pound's other hobbies... Which was hard for me to take when I did find out (soon after that, prob some other class). Anyway, I certainly don't blame anyone for making that a reason to reject his work or his influence. That's not the way I approach literature, but some bad, bad goings on in Pound's history.

Oh boy...

[Gregory Dowling]

There is a brilliant essay by Richard Wilbur entitled "Round About a Poem of Housman's". The poem is "Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries", and he shows how the poem works more effectively for a reader who can catch the allusions to Milton and to the letters of Saint Paul. However, even a reader who doesn’t catch them will appreciate much that the poem offers. Wilbur says: “A poem should not be a like a Double-Crostic; it should not be the sort of puzzle in which you get nothing until you get it all.” The essay goes on to talk more generally about “the art of referring”, which, he says, ultimately comes down to a question of tact. The tactful poet knows how to refer to things that a reader is likely to know; if the reader doesn't know them, the poem will often still work, even if not so fully. Pound’s Cantos, he says, "are supremely tactless. That is, they seem to arise from a despair of any community, and they do not imply a possible audience as Housman's poem does."

Let me quote his final remarks about the Cantos, with which I thoroughly agree:

There are three things a reader might do about the Cantos. First, he might decide not to read them. Second, he might read them, as Dr. Williams recommends, putting up with much bafflement for the sake of the occasional perfect lyric, the consistently clean and musical language, and the masterly achievement of quantitative effects through the strophic balancing of rhythmic masses. Or, thirdly, the reader might decide to understand the Cantos by consulting, over a period of years, the many books from which Pound drew his material. At almost every university, nowadays, there is someone who has undertaken that task: he may be identified by the misshapenness of his learning and by his air of lost identity.