I think looking back on eras past is an immense valuable activity particularly with warts and all.
I am going to write a novel on this time period, so any input is helpful. I am on the last stages of "Sparrow of Beijing" so the cycle will start over again.
I've come to realise that it's time I studied, really studied poetry. I want to take a poetry class (a set of classes). I don't suppose you do this, teach an online course, do you? Or can you recommend, point me in a direction, give me a heading? The gaps in my knowledge are so vast.
Eleanor, I do, in fact, though I've been on hiatus from teaching since this past winter. I'm now scheduled to teach introduction to poetry again, at City University of New York, online -- but not until this coming summer. Here are a few links I quickly gathered that are American based. I'm sure your search online would return similar kinds of possibilities from UK universities and venues.
This is a course by a very popular teacher, very active in the poetry world. It doesn't appear to be currently open, but it is frequently.
This is a course in modern poetry from Yale, not current but can be downloaded, so there's no interaction with an instructor. (You might also be interested in broader introductions, and you can find them in the link above.)
I'll have a second go at Pound. I had heard of who he was by 1976 (at 9) but I have not read his Cantos tell a decade later. I to do not think that it is powerful ways as deeply as Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, Comedia, Paradise Lost, or Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. But I think that it is a contender for the second tier of at the poems that has Henriade in it.
One thing that is here is that he finally admitted his distaste and hatred for the entire group of human beings who have done more on average for credit of the human race them all but a few others. And it shows in ways in his work that are deep and profound, if a flaw can be so described, on the other hand he was both a midwife to modernism, and a contributor to it. (με/δε) This shaped modernist because both the unparalleled heights and excessive failings of movement are writ large in both his writing and his activities.
Personally, I find both TS and HD better poets, though TS is marred in the same way as Pound, but there is something that needs to be said for the immediacy with which he reports on the Avant Garde of modernism, similarly with Bartok, Schoenburg, Stravinsky, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, Einstein, a myriad of others who shaped the movement in profound ways.
You offer a good take as an overview. Politics and bigotry aside for a moment, with notable, mostly early exceptions, Pound's poetry, despite its wide erudition and technical mastery, will not, I think, live on in the essential sense of providing meaning and artistic value to non-scholarly lovers of poetry. Understanding of his influence is a different matter. And if one approaches him holistically, as ultimately, we should, we see, if we care to make the great effort, that the politics and bigotry are not separable from the poetic project and themes. The core contradiction in Modernism is that while aesthetically it offered a revolutionary response to modernity, the cultural politics of large numbers of Modernists were at best uncertain, generally conservative in the end, and sometimes reactionary.
Great essay. I find that Pound's influence just keeps cropping up everywhere. I think his poetry still merits reading and I enjoy it. Perhaps it's because I share his interest in Chinese poetry. Thank you for making me reflect on his work again.
Thanks, Jeffrey. Yes, of course -- the Chinese connection, for you. Yes, the poetry does still merit reading, for multiple reasons, including the ways in which it's "*problematic*, to use the term literally. One writer I've read said that he and another writer-friend, when discussing talented, even great artists who present such problematic challenges, have developed a shorthand: they just look at each other and say, "Ezra Pound."
'He and another writer-friend, when discussing talented, even great artists who present such problematic challenges, have developed a shorthand: they just look at each other and say, "Ezra Pound."' Thanks! I love this.
A good read on the early Modernist.
Thank you, Stirling.
Keep doing what you are doing. There will be those of us who are interested.
🙏
I think looking back on eras past is an immense valuable activity particularly with warts and all.
I am going to write a novel on this time period, so any input is helpful. I am on the last stages of "Sparrow of Beijing" so the cycle will start over again.
It's a period of astonishing significance and influence, so that's a solid foundation. Glad we have that connection.
I have a love/hate relationship. There is too much there to be otherwise.
I've come to realise that it's time I studied, really studied poetry. I want to take a poetry class (a set of classes). I don't suppose you do this, teach an online course, do you? Or can you recommend, point me in a direction, give me a heading? The gaps in my knowledge are so vast.
Eleanor, I do, in fact, though I've been on hiatus from teaching since this past winter. I'm now scheduled to teach introduction to poetry again, at City University of New York, online -- but not until this coming summer. Here are a few links I quickly gathered that are American based. I'm sure your search online would return similar kinds of possibilities from UK universities and venues.
This is a course by a very popular teacher, very active in the poetry world. It doesn't appear to be currently open, but it is frequently.
https://www.classcentral.com/course/modpo-356
This is a course in modern poetry from Yale, not current but can be downloaded, so there's no interaction with an instructor. (You might also be interested in broader introductions, and you can find them in the link above.)
https://oyc.yale.edu/english/engl-310
And here's a whole range of classes:
https://learningpath.org/articles/Free_Online_Poetry_Courses_from_Top_Universities.html
This is just a starter. Happy to be of more help!
You’re a star. Thank you. I’ll get researching through all those. Thanks again.
I'll have a second go at Pound. I had heard of who he was by 1976 (at 9) but I have not read his Cantos tell a decade later. I to do not think that it is powerful ways as deeply as Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, Comedia, Paradise Lost, or Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. But I think that it is a contender for the second tier of at the poems that has Henriade in it.
One thing that is here is that he finally admitted his distaste and hatred for the entire group of human beings who have done more on average for credit of the human race them all but a few others. And it shows in ways in his work that are deep and profound, if a flaw can be so described, on the other hand he was both a midwife to modernism, and a contributor to it. (με/δε) This shaped modernist because both the unparalleled heights and excessive failings of movement are writ large in both his writing and his activities.
Personally, I find both TS and HD better poets, though TS is marred in the same way as Pound, but there is something that needs to be said for the immediacy with which he reports on the Avant Garde of modernism, similarly with Bartok, Schoenburg, Stravinsky, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, Einstein, a myriad of others who shaped the movement in profound ways.
You offer a good take as an overview. Politics and bigotry aside for a moment, with notable, mostly early exceptions, Pound's poetry, despite its wide erudition and technical mastery, will not, I think, live on in the essential sense of providing meaning and artistic value to non-scholarly lovers of poetry. Understanding of his influence is a different matter. And if one approaches him holistically, as ultimately, we should, we see, if we care to make the great effort, that the politics and bigotry are not separable from the poetic project and themes. The core contradiction in Modernism is that while aesthetically it offered a revolutionary response to modernity, the cultural politics of large numbers of Modernists were at best uncertain, generally conservative in the end, and sometimes reactionary.
"Understanding of his influence is a different matter. "
An essential point. As is his recognition of better writer than himself.
Remember that various political stripes all see the need for artistic response.
Great essay. I find that Pound's influence just keeps cropping up everywhere. I think his poetry still merits reading and I enjoy it. Perhaps it's because I share his interest in Chinese poetry. Thank you for making me reflect on his work again.
Thanks, Jeffrey. Yes, of course -- the Chinese connection, for you. Yes, the poetry does still merit reading, for multiple reasons, including the ways in which it's "*problematic*, to use the term literally. One writer I've read said that he and another writer-friend, when discussing talented, even great artists who present such problematic challenges, have developed a shorthand: they just look at each other and say, "Ezra Pound."
'He and another writer-friend, when discussing talented, even great artists who present such problematic challenges, have developed a shorthand: they just look at each other and say, "Ezra Pound."' Thanks! I love this.