Wednesday, July 14, 2004

One thing of interest emerging from Pound's biography (I'm in the late 1920s and things are tending toward disaster) that I hadn't realized is the fact that Poetry has historically mostly been interesting in spite of itself. Although as I recall their sample poem (by which contributors are meant to judge if their own work is appropriate) in the old Poets Market is an excerpt from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," it appears that Harriet Monroe's Poetry was, outside of Pound's direct influence, devoted to neo-Victorian sentimental verse. Who's their Pound today? And what exactly are they doing with all that money? Not much, not yet.

Odd dissonance in seeing that Pound felt there was about to be a vital surge of Jewish American literature ("capital" was his word); he saw the "Objectivists" issue that he got Monroe to permit Louis Zukofsky to edit as a foretaste of that. But I should know by now not to expect consistency from Pound.

Basil Bunting has also made his first appearance, though only in reference to his being jailed in Genoa for a "drunken disturbance."

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