Tuesday, November 1, 2022

50th Anniversary of Ezra Pound's Death- And Thoughts on Neo-Fascism

https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/654

     Had I been an English major instead of a German major, I would have remembered this. Actually, I was in my sophomore year at Penn State and could not declare a major yet. I was thinking for a bit about being a Journalism major that Autumn.

     Yet I was reading poetry and was even writing some them. If I remembered anything about Pound, it was his treason. The link above contains examples of how he spoke against the United States and praised the Axis during the Second World War. That is worse than anything done or said by Jane Fonda or the Dixie Chicks. 

     Yet Pound was an excellent poet, the leading Imagist, friend and mentor to T.S. Eliot, Hilda Doolittle, and many other literary giants.  In addition, he was a translator of poems.

  
    Read more about him and some of his poems at the link above.

     Until a few years ago I thought that Fascism had been defeated once and for all in 1945. In the wake of the USSR's breakup, I began to notice rising nationalist, right-wing movements in Eastern Europe blaming Jews and Gypsies for all woes. But I did;t think the USA would be infected by this, especially after Barack Obama's election in 2008.

     I was wrong. Were Ezra around today, he would be on FOX News, likely hosting his own podcast and writing odes to Trump, Putin, and such like them.

     Shortly before his death, Pound gave a sort of explanation about his anti-Semitism to Allen Ginsberg. As far as I know, there was no more public statement given.

     Even when expressed in good poetry by a gifted poet and scholar, the content is still vile and cannot be separated from who Ezra Pound really was. 







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