a pact & the old fascist: on the ringleader EP

First a quick note on A Pact. Because I've read it several times and never thought that much of it, perhaps not having enough background on it, or just looking at the text without the context (which I could turn into a large argument for historical theoretics, how this poem is so lost without it). WALT WHITMAN. The American. The ultra-liberal. vs. Ezra Pound. The ex-pat. The ultra-conservative. A strange union. Pound just had to come to terms with him, figure him out, even though they seem so radically different. And it's funny how I think of someone like Ginsberg, paying homage to Whitman in more reverent ways than Pound, of how Pound and Ginsberg would relate. (or how Ginsberg felt about Pound, which could be an interesting thing to look into).

But, old dear Hugh. I am quite drawn to the first quote, from Nemesianus, Summer heat calls us into the shade. As an allegory for the ex-pat poets. The problems brewing in the teens political climate, how much their leaving was not only in search of other artists & intellectuals, but how much did the world already hate Americans by this point? I don't know. But, the war is horrible, we poets have to hide, in our books, in our linguistics, in our histories. (And this seems so much different from the later, older Pound who was in the middle of the politics & histories). But, yes, this is where he's hiding--his ultra-intellectualism. In the first stanza this takes the form: He strove to resuscitate the dead art \ of poetry. Dead, old, shaded. As in, Pound's world of allusions that we all have to look up, that most intellectuals of his day had to look up. Furthering this later: half savage country, the summer heat that he seeks to leave behind.

This quote is one of the few in Pound that really works this well, so many of the allusions seemingly stuck in to make him look cool. This is different, yes, in the almightly Latin, but with the links to the ex-pat community, the theme of the work as a whole, etc. Well done, EP, not that you need my pat on the back.