FOR EZ, on his 129th birthday In another conversation, I read that Ez was a pretentious prick. Im old enough to remember when Joyce studies were considered silly, so I will take this in stride. There are several praised poets who I would more quickly call pretentious, but I try to be polite. A dear friend, and a woman whose brilliance I greatly admire (on this side idolatry!) speaks of Pounds raging fascism. It is unfortunate, and the anti-semitism is abhorrent, but the man wrote so much and opened so many doors, it may be time to say politics is not the all in all, and forgiveness (mercy) is not a weakness. Divide his career in half; consider first the poems written before 1920. Surely there you will find items that you enjoy, that even make you smile. Here too you will find some of the great translations, not just the Chinese, but Provencal, Italian - really excellent work: if thats pretentious, so be it. Pound incorporated the documentary in a new (modern) way. His ambition to create a modern epic (a poem that includes history) was long in planning; at the end of his life he thought the whole thing botched. So, do not think you are the first to dismiss it! But there is much there, and since it is not entirely fascist propaganda or anti-semitic ravings, you may proceed from point to point and discover moments of joy and beauty. An earlier documentarian was Robert Browning, whose Ring and the Book is closely based upon actualities, but there are moments when lulled by a steady iambic pentameter, the reader begins to doze. Pounds metrical diversity, his method of rapid cuts (sharp sudden juxtaposition) keeps the reader on the alert; writing is like baseball, wrote Marianne Moore, and baseball is exciting. Not the steady back and forth of football or basketball, but moments of pause, before something happens. This may be useful to bear in mind reading Ez. It is easy to hate dismiss or ignore Ezra Pound. But perhaps it is worth the effort to engage with someone who is, in some respects repulsive, and yet in other ways, rewarding. If you can open up to Ez, you just might find that in the long run there are fewer enemies. Ez Lives!
Posted on: Thu, 30 Oct 2014 18:56:53 +0000
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