Month: July 2020

A GUIDE TO EZRA POUND (1885-1920), lan Christie Clark, 1958

Pound’s study of economies, then, was not something separate
from his artistic endeavors, it stemmed directly from his observation
of the effects of economies on art in its social aspect and the
opportunity given the artist to exist and practise his artistry in a
given social order.

The effect of capitalism on art and letters,
apart from all questions of the relations of
either capitalism, art or letters, to the general
public or the mass, have been: (1) the non-
employment of the best artists and writers; (2)
the erection of an enormous and horrible bureau-
cracy of letters, supposed to act as curators, etc.
which bureaucracy has almost uninterruptedly
sabotaged intellectual life, obscuring the memory
of the best work of the past and doing its vill-
ainous utmost to impede the work of contemporary
creators.
(“Murder by Capital,” p. 592)

A GUIDE TO EZRA POUND (1885-1920), lan Christie Clark, 1958

No, most emphatically I will not ask Eliot
to write down to any audience whatsoever. I
dare say my instinct was sound enough when
I volunteered to quit the magazine a year ago.
Neither will I send you Eliot’s address in
order that he may be insu1ted.
(Letters, pp. 44-45)

Then too, if the editor printed the best of what materia1 came
to her independent of Pound’s influence, the 1eve1 of the work was often
incredibl.y bad as is attested by this fragment, chosen at random from
Poetry in 1913:

Swan Creek
Stream, stream, stream
Oh the willows by the stream;
The pop1ars and the wi1lows
And the grave1 all ag1eam •••
(Fish, p. 206)

Pound oould only write in frustration ”My Gawddd! This is a
ROTTEN number of Poetry” (Letters, p. 60) and continue to prod her with
advice:

Can’t you ever see the difference between what is
‘good’ and good enough for the public, and what
is ‘good’for the artist, whose only respectable
aim is perfection?
(Letters, p. 55)

Whatever Poetry’s faults, the magazine had done in America what none
of the established journals had managed to do, and that was to publish
at ALL the work it did, even if under duress. As Pound summed up the
situation in January, 1917, in a letter to Margaret Anderson:

I have only three quarrels with them: Their
idiotic fuss over christianising all poems
they print, their concessions to local pudi-
bundery, and that infamous remark of Whitman’s
about poets needing an audience.
(Letters, p. 107)

pudibund (also pudibond)
Pronunciation /ˈpjuːdɪbʌnd/
ADJECTIVE
Modest, bashful; prudish.

Origin
Mid 16th century (in an earlier sense). From classical Latin pudibundus easily ashamed, bashful, modest, shameful from pudēre to make or be ashamed + -bundus, suffix forming verbal adjectives.
https://www.lexico.com/definition/pudibund

resulted in 1915 in his editing a second anthology called, un-
advisedly, Catholic Anthology. As a reaction to Some Imagist
Poets, it included no credo or manifesto; it contained only
the poems (featuring Eliot) which in Pound’s opinion were
the significant ones of the time. Although it was not
expected to have much of a sale, Pound’s refusal to change
the title at his publisher’s (Elkin Mathews) request didn’t
help matters: As he wrote to Kate Buss in March, 1916:
I have told Mathews to send you also a Cat. Anth.
The Jesuits here have, I think, succeeded in
preventing its being reviewed in press (at least
I have seen no review during the past months).
Poor Elkin wailing, Why, why will you needlessly
irritate people?’ (Letters, p. 73)
Like Des Imagistes before it, and Profile and Active Anthology
to come after in later years, Catholic Anthology was a way of preserving
in book form a few of the poems Pound thought valuable. It was another
of his several successful failures of this kind.

A GUIDE TO EZRA POUND (1885-1920), lan Christie Clark, 1958