[James Brancheau]

I think Pound would make a good movie. At least it seems right for right now. It's tragic, and might expose the roots of intolerance. Even among the blessed literary types. I do believe Pound was a genius and right on about imagism. Everyone incorporates this today. You do, really. His own poetry, not as much, for me. I think it's best to separate artist from art. I completely understand Sam's opinion about Manhattan. But I think one point of the movie is that love exists somewhere you couldn't let yourself consider. It still works for me.

[Andrew Szilvasy]

I'm in the middle of the three volume David Moody biography (going slow...in V2 and been reading for like 1.5 years on and off) in part because of what you're saying, James.

It is sad that someone so prominent and important to the early 20th century became what he became: an unrepentant fascist. And it is, in many ways, sadder that the "American Poetry Establishment" defended him. The Bollingen Prize, the cushy St. Elizabeth's asylum where he was visited and fêted by the next generations as they visited him....

[Julie Steiner]

Originally Posted by Julie Steiner

I know that "civil discourse" has become as derided and jaded a term as "political correctness" in some quarters, but it's definitely more conducive to reconciliation than today's carnival-like auto-da-fé atmosphere in social media.

James, by this I meant that some people perceive cries for civil discourse as code for "let's shut down all expressions of anger and harsh criticism--however legitimate that anger and criticism may be--because impoliteness makes me uncomfortable, and my personal discomfort is more important than whatever injustices you're complaining about."

Similarly, some people dismiss all defenses of people outside of one's own group as motivated by a desire to appear fashionably "politically correct," rather than motivated by sincere concern for other human beings.

In both cases, another label for basic human decency is rejected, rather than basic human decency by its own name, because who wants to be perceived as opposing basic human decency?

[James Brancheau]

I just don't disagree with any of that, Julie. Wish I could. Our disagreement, maybe, would be over the responsibility of the artist. Maybe approach. I'm very sensitive about class issues, union issues. I won't buy anything from Wal-Mart. Not that I would anyway, but it's a stance. My point is that I don't wake up in the morning and assume I have to write about these things. I argue a lot, but I'm not an argument.

[Julie Steiner]

Unless you're a poet laureate or working on commission, there's no obligation to write on a social or political issue that doesn't move you personally.

Conversely, the heartfelt, authentic compulsion to create art about something is no guarantee that the resulting artwork will be any good.

The obligation I feel is not to write on a particular topic, but rather to edit and suppress the reams of utter crap I've probably churned out on that topic before I produce anything worth showing to someone else. A bad poem is still a bad poem, no matter what it's about.

M.A. Griffiths had some withering things to say about the general low quality of 9/11 poems. And Holocaust poems. And anti-war poems. And victim's-perspective poems. And other ripped-from-the-headlines issues treated as Poem Opportunities. The pressing-social-issue poems that are really good are remarkable in part because they're so damn rare. I'll try to find some good Maz quotations on that when I have some time.

[Michael F]

Originally Posted by Julie Steiner

Day famously enjoined others against calling her a saint, saying she did not want to “be dismissed so easily.”

Yeah, that's just the sort of thing I'd expect Dorothy Day to say.

Back to Auden and "Postscript". Personally I fail to find a strong correlation between moral virtue and great poets. We don't refer to St. Will or St. Emily or St. Robert or even St. Possum. And in Auden's particular case, it's not usually his overtly religious poems that I most admire. So again, I'm unconvinced by those lines. Maybe I'm missing something. I'll let it go, now...

[James Brancheau]

Yeah, ha, maz and I didn't always get along, surprise surprise. But over the years I've probably drifted to more her thinking. I do think she was way way too conservative, for my taste.

[Jim Moonan]

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Originally Posted by Julie Steiner

I know that "civil discourse" has become as derided and jaded a term as "political correctness" in some quarters, but it's definitely more conducive to reconciliation than today's carnival-like auto-da-fé atmosphere in social media.]

I think you are right on top of the essential distinguishing difference between the discourse between two people (Cerf and Auden) and the discourse to which we have sunk today online and on any media, really. It's become less about the issue and more about the entertainment value. More about being right and less about being heard. More about how many followers one has and less about how many leaders we have. More about disconnected voices and less about a meeting of the minds or a bonafide exchange of ideas.
If as a culture we don't learn how to use social media as a tool for solving problems rather than fuel for inflaming them, then we will be miserable for the foreseeable future.

But back to how Pound's transgressions were viewed by Cerf and Auden... Imagine the equivalent behavior of Pound's taking place today. (He was no Snowdon. Pound was a traitor.) Still, I think his work as a poet and writer should not be prevented from being treated on its own merits. If we are to deny his work from being published where it otherwise would be welcome, then shouldn’t we also disallow the heavy edits he made to Eliot’s Wasteland?

I think Cerf handled it well, as did Auden. Julie's point of civil discourse being the missing piece in today's climate of condemnation and vilification seems to me to be the take away from this. I am in full lament for civil discourse and measured thinking. That well has dried up.
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[Julie Steiner]

Originally Posted by James Brancheau

Yeah, ha, maz and I didn't always get along, surprise surprise. But over the years I've probably drifted to more her thinking. I do think she was way way too conservative, for my taste.

"Way way too conservative"? Really?

I do not get that impression.

Maz frequently ridiculed authoritarianism, whether of the religious or political variety.

Politically, she called herself a republican (small "r"), said she would rather be a citizen than a subject, and even expressed disgruntlement about being obliged to sing "God Save the Monarch" [sic].

Of Margaret Thatcher she said:

Hated her politics, but at least you knew where you were with Maggie. Didn’t need a flippin’ focus group to tell her what she believed in....

[The poem on which she was commenting ("A String of Pearls," about the name Margaret) was posted 2003-11-29 to The Pennine Poetry Works and 2003-12-03 to Burgundy--I don't have time to check to which of those she posted this comment.]

She had nothing good to say about Tony Blair, and his role in the UK's involvement in the Iraq War, and his relationship with US conservatives (small "c") and Republicans (large "R") like President George W. Bush.

She complained about having been obliged to attend chapel at her religious school, although she was a non-believer.

She called herself an agnostic, apparently in contrast with her father's flat-out atheism. She refused to believe that any omniscient, omnipotent, all-loving God could allow so much suffering in the world, so the logical conclusion was that such a being did not exist. She often used the traditional concept of a Creator in her poems as a way to express her wonder and gratitude for natural beauty and for life itself; but I think her poems use the name "God" mainly as convenient shorthand for abstractions like compassion and justice, which she wholeheartedly believed in and served without requiring sentience of them.

Granted, Maz's ekphrastic poem "Christis Sissifactus" (a contemplation of a painting in Stanley Spencer's "Christ in the wilderness" series) hums with homophobia. But not because Maz was socially conservative herself. She preferred to think of Jesus as a radical champion of the downtrodden, as evidenced by the Beatitudes, and she felt that Stanley Spencer's painting was more consistent with that perception. I think she was using homophobic characterizations in the poem to criticize homophobic Christians' hypocrisy in their preference for the usual artistic depictions of Jesus as gentle and passive and non-threatening.

In sum:

Vegan. Feminist. Pacifist. Sexually non-judgmental. Defender of freedoms of thought and expression. Constantly breaking the rules in her poetry, often apparently just to see what would happen.

I'm just not getting the "way way too conservative" vibe. Curmudgeonly, yes, sometimes, but conservatives have no monopoly on that.

[James Brancheau]

Yeah, I show up on so many political threads, so I shouldn't be surprised. I meant that she was poetically conservative, Julie. From my exchanges with her. I do really like a lot of her work tho, what I've seen.