[Nigel Mace]

I first wrote this contribution earlier today, beginning with my thanks for an introduction, for me, to Jeffers interesting, if not appealing, work. Then, perhaps influenced by Ann's self-restraint, I wiped it. However, since this discussion goes on, and partly stimulated by Bill Lantry's latest suggestion of the difficulty of reaching a decision on the case, I feel that it does, perhaps, need posting after all.

Though I can't be bothered with relative estimation of the vileness of Pound's opinions compared with illustrious others, the thread has sent me to read, at greater length than I have ever done before, Pound's original broadcast scripts.
They are not only even more repulsive than the usual quotations indicate, but they are also extremely poor evidence of a mind that is worth listening to on any subject whatsoever.

Wagner wrote offensive rubbish about Jews and Jewish culture but did so with a degree of coherent argument within the limits of some of the 'thinking' of his day and - on these admittedly fractured terms - made a coherent attempt to contend for his point of view, daft and racially unpleasant those this was.
Pound, by contrast, raves in these scripts with logic as absent as his syntax; to be frank, he raves convolutedly and nonsensically - reflecting little more than the prejudices of the gutter. The sense of a parallel with the embittered ranting of the frustrated one-time Viennese art student is difficult to resist.
So, all humane decency apart - though I am not in favour of ignoring such a consideration - Pound deserves to be disregarded as a man who was capable of urging so incoherently and stupidly on matters which he considered as of such high importance and on such an influential platform. If this was the quality of his mind and person, why on earth should anyone - left or right or anything else - take such an unembarrassed clown seriously on any other subject? His sense of judgement, intellectually - all morality temporarily set aside - was shown to be worthless. Why should it be respected elsewhere? Clearly, it should not.
As Michael, I think, commented earlier - perhaps the insanity judgement was spot on after all.

[John Whitworth]

Spot on, Nigel. Also, in the case of Wagner,you have great Art. In the case of Pound you have very little.

[Jayne Osborn]

Pound's original broadcast scripts... are not only even more repulsive than the usual quotations indicate, but they are also extremely poor evidence of a mind that is worth listening to on any subject whatsoever.

Sorry, but some of this thread (especially Nigel's post, above) just makes me wonder why we were ever expected to join in with the ''Happy birthday'' wishes to Ezra Pound.
I'm glad he lived so long ago that we don't have to suffer him being around now.

[Kyle Norwood]

Jayne Osborn said, "Sorry, but some of this thread (especially Nigel's post, above) just makes me wonder why we were ever expected to join in with the 'Happy birthday' wishes to Ezra Pound."

Am I right in thinking that Quincy was being a bit of a provocateur with his original post?

[R. Nemo Hill]

But he is still around now, Jayne, and that is the whole point of this thread. Far from being able to escape all suffering in blissful willful ignorance, we might actually be called upon, in the light of conscience, to reflect on the complexity of his undying echo, for better or worse.

Nemo

[Alder Ellis]

Lots of fine stuff in this thread, but Gregory’s post #30 citing Wilbur’s essay seems to me particularly wonderful. How great is Wilbur? I was delighted to find him faulting the Cantos for being “supremely tactless,” because it has always struck me that Wilbur’s own poetry shows extraordinary aesthetic tact. & then his explanation of Pound’s tactlessness is devastating: that it seems to derive “from a despair of any community.” And then, as a coup de grace, the concession that the Cantos have, after all, found a community: namely, that of academics who, “over a period of years,” have read up on all of Pound’s sources, & have thereby achieved a “misshapen” learning & an “air of lost identity.” This is a bit malicious, but it cuts deep, & is very funny.

“Things fall apart, the center cannot hold”: this seems to have been a rather overwhelming dynamic in the early part of the last century, around WWI time. The conservative turn of the modernist poets was a natural defense-mechanism under the circumstances. But Pound seems to have become untethered. He was lavishly gifted, lavishly generous, but evidently with an insufficient center of gravity, i.e., conscience. He scolded himself after the war for having fallen for the vulgar old error of anti-semitism—not for having been morally wrong, but for having been stupid & gauche. Conscience at one remove.

The list of important writers Pound became constructively involved with in the early modernist years is amazing. A counter-factual scenario of a world without Pound might seem somewhat depleted. The positive energy was significant. The critical intelligence evident in his editing of “The Waste Land” was a major achievement, arguably.

Elizabeth Bishop’s poem seems to me to strike a good balance between antipathy & appreciation. To come down, whole hog, on one side or the other, is tactless, or should we say, ideological. To fully engage with the brilliant & fucked-up reality of the man is humanizing, potentially. Always a useful exercise.

[Julie Steiner]

Originally Posted by W.F. Lantry

(ps. I can't help but notice that all my examples here are masculine. So one last one: why don't we see these same kind of arguments in women's poetics?)

Well, consider the political activities of the following women poets, who were contemporaries of Pound...all of whom, by the way, were then, and are still, regarded in some quarters as "not really women"--or were even complimented as "honorary men" (by those who feel that womanhood = inferiority)--because these individuals were genderqueer or lesbian or bisexual. Of course, a "proper," i.e. apparently hetero-normative, woman of that time would have devoted herself wholly to the demands of her husband and children, rather than selfishly pursued a literary career.

From a 1997 New York Times book review of The Selected Letters of Marianne Moore:

Moore was a radical for her time, calling herself in 1909 a Socialist ''but not a Marxian.'' At Bryn Mawr she championed equality for women, influenced by Bryn Mawr's president, M. Carey Thomas, and by a performance of Ibsen's ''Doll's House,'' with its theme of individual liberty. To John [her brother] and her mother she recounts arguing for suffrage and equal pay, and she praises England for giving women power. Later, preaching to farmers as a member of the Women's Suffrage Party in Pennsylvania, she boasts to John that ''every man but three said they would vote for suffrage in November.'' Her early feminism continues in her persistent appeals for women's education, though characteristically she holds contradictory views, such as frowning on a married woman's use of her own name. In this regard, I think she does not change her mind so much as entertain simultaneous opposites, as she does throughout her life. In early letters to John she refers to herself as ''he'' and signs off, ''Your affectionate brother.'' At the same time, she apprises her family of a new stylishly feathered hat.

Beyond those apparent contraries, there is a rigorous moral rectitude. She knew no contradictions to friendship, loyalty, religion or equality. The poet, who had protested anti-Semitic remarks at Bryn Mawr, was to fight intolerance ever after. When Bryher was rescuing victims of fascism in Europe, Moore wrote, ''I am willing to sign or have you put my name to any paper in any country protesting against this persecution.'' She rebuked Robert McAlmon for anti-Semitism in 1921, criticized Roosevelt in 1932 for cooperating with ''the anti-Negro South.'' And in 1939, writing about the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr's concept ''that intolerance is at work in us all, in all countries,'' she called for the ruthless self-examination that appears in her later poem ''In Distrust of Merits.''

It is not surprising, then, that she was torn between outrage against and loyalty to Pound, with whom she corresponded since he first admired her poems in 1919. Indeed, Moore's 1919 letter still offers the best clues to the origins of her departure from conventional verse by using conversational speech rhythms and natural word order. Later, Pound's anti-Semitism and indictment for treason stunned her, and she reproached him directly for being ''intolerable,'' ''foolish'' and ''brazen.'' Finally, though, she supported Pound in his treason trial of April 1958, believing, as she told him, that ''misfortune does not alter friendship.''

From the Wikipedia article on Edna St. Vincent Millay:

During the first war Millay had been a dedicated and active pacifist; however, from 1940 she supported the Allied Forces, writing in celebration of the war effort and later working with Writers' War Board to create propaganda, including poetry. Her reputation in poetry circles was damaged by her war work. Merle Rubin noted: "She seems to have caught more flak from the literary critics for supporting democracy than Ezra Pound did for championing fascism."

Two relevant sections of Gertrude Stein's Wikipedia article are too long to quote here, but they are certainly eye-opening in light of Pound's advocacy of Mussolini. Stein was quite vocal about her advocacy of Philippe Pétain, the prime minister of Vichy France. But her comments regarding Hitler are so hard to parse that no one seems sure whether she intended them ironically or not. (I might echo Nigel's verdict on Pound's having raved "convolutedly and nonsensically"; then again, this IS Gertrude Stein, so a certain degree of convolution and nonsense seems de rigueur.) See Political views and especially Stein during World War II.

Okay, I'll just quote one little snippet which seems particularly damning:

Although Jewish, Stein collaborated with Vichy France, a regime that deported more than 75,000 Jews to Nazi concentration camps, of whom only 3 percent survived the Holocaust. In 1944, Stein wrote that Petain's policies were "really wonderful so simple so natural so extraordinary". This was Stein's contention in the year when the town of Culoz, where she and Toklas resided, saw the removal of its Jewish children to Auschwitz. It is difficult to say, however, how aware Stein was of these events. As she wrote in Wars I Have Seen, "However near a war is it is always not very near. Even when it is here."

I suspect that there may be less attention paid to the perceived political morality of female poets of that era because 1. to those discussing perceptions of morality, these women's deviance from sexual norms has been of more interest than their politics, and 2. they are often regarded as notable mainly for the gimmick of having been women in a man's literary world, so fewer people are inclined to scrutinize what they thought about current events.

[Max Goodman]

Woody Allen is almost certainly a paedophile

My understanding is that only one child has accused him of any sexual advance and that, according to his defenders, children whose guardians are involved in messy break-ups such as Allen's and Mia Farrow's are sometimes manipulated into making false accusations. Unless I'm misinformed--a possibility--"almost certainly" doesn't feel accurate.

[John Whitworth]

I think we are a bit quick to label people as paedophiles on very little evidence. In the UK it happens all the time. The idea seems to be that an accuser is always to be believed. Humph!

[Bill Carpenter]

Thanks very much, Julie. Got anything on H.D.?

PS. Here is a link to her Poetry Foundation bio. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/h-d

She was deeply involved with Pound off and on throughout their long lives, although she detested his political views and anti-Semitism.