It deeply offends Tere when the author of “Eureka” is mentioned. We observe a law, as in physics. It IS a physical law, in fact.

Critical faculties exist as much as any object, but we cannot see them–only their results.

If one embrace the modernism of Pound/Williams/Black Mountain, that pot of dullness, that scrabby, sexist band, it follows–as the night the day–that one CANNOT (and here is the law) ponder the graceful author of “Eureka” without feeling uncomfortable, offended, disturbed, in a manner which the modernist devotee cannot quite understand, but which is nonetheless as REAL as any physical law. It is not only the author of “Eureka” who offends; Pound chose to explicitly ignore an entire spectrum of the BEST in literature, in giving his world lit. syllabus to the world in 1929. It is right there in black and white in ‘How To Read.’ When this is pointed out, when the ACTUAL TEXT of Pound is put before the modernist devotee, when all the gossip about Pound’s p.r. work is put aside for 10 seconds, frantic backpedaling and excuses result.

Having swallowed Pound’s Modernism, their stomach CANNOT tolerate other foods: even to taste ‘The Rationale of Verse’ or ‘Ulalume’ or ‘The Purloined Letter,’ or to read with pleasure the poetry of Percy Shelley makes them ill. They turn as green-faced as T.S. Eliot.

Thomas

Ezra Pound is closer to the Unabomber than Edgar Poe is to Stephen King. Pound and King are minor authors. Poe is not.

Thomas

“That’s colorful language coming from a pacifist like you, most at home among the tall trees and the beehives, and I wondered if you’d care to comment on it here. Do you still feel that way?”

Mr. Woodman, it seems the ironic tone in my comment those many months ago did not carry over; which I figure is the problem with online (flatline) communication. I no more extolled silverback behavior back then, do now, or ever have. Mine was an observation on human behavior. I figure the silverback behavior will likely kill off our species. People, wanting to think they are in some way special or annointed, tend not to reckon with the fact that genetically they are .1 percent different from the next highiest primate. As expressed behaviorally a genetic difference of .1 percent is not much to go on.

But I see that, once again, a conversation has been turned back on E.A. Poe, rather like an in-grown toenail.

Terreson

The grand Chilean poet Gonzalo Rojas (born 1917 and going strong) has a long magisterial poem on Pound, published in my translation by Green Integer. Maybe I’ll post it sometime, but I don’t want to Desmond the thread.

Now monomanaiacal Ez begets equally didactic Brady. Modernism as the root of poetic evil? Too late, my brother; too late, but never mind.

Have you read Pound’s “How To Read?” It’s like watching a man swatting imaginary flies. The guy was a lunatic. You sound like a fresh-faced intern in the p.r. dept of the House of Pound.

It’s time to drop this line of apology. You know what? I don’t care who Pound “recognized.” Writers “recognize” each other all the time. Poe recognized Hawthorne–and you can read how Poe did so right here. http://www.eapoe.org They were NOT friends, by the way. Where are the writings of Pound that make another writer more memorable for us? Where? Where are these memorable writings of Pound? Not gossip. Writings. On Hemingway, for instance? How does Pound get credit for Hemingway? Remember when the public recognized genius? If a writer was “recognized” by Pound, that’s a strike against them. A good writer will prevail against all sorts of “recognitions.”

Thomas

if recognizing the ‘genius’ of edgar allen is a litmus test, count me as ignorant, too. developing a poe-sy taste aversion very early on was a disguised blessing in that it kept me from ever reading goosebumps or the poetry of stephen king, in whose company his work properly belongs.

Poe dedicated his prose poem “Eureka” (1848) to Alexander von Humboldt.

Yes, Goethe is another giant which the idiotic Pound in his “How To Read,” (1929) his definitive curriculum for the brave new university of modernistic pedantics, completely leaves out. According to Pound, the student should NOT read Goethe, Schiller, Poe, Pindar, Swift, Pope, Byron, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Virgil, Milton, Plato, Aristotle, any Russian author, and Shakespeare, but should earnestly study Confucius, Villon and the author of “Madame Bovary.” Pound was not only ignorant, he was stupid. Yet we concede all sorts of importance to this jackass.

Can we just call this thread ‘The Fallacy of Rejecting Pound?’