PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

Thank you so very much.  I must admit that, for most of my life, I despised Pound.  My first Poetry teacher, during freshman year in high school, crammed Pound's poetry down our throats because he had croaked that same year.  And, in the environment that enclosed my adolescence, Pound's broadcasts for Mussolini's fascist regime disqualified him from being an acceptible poet.  Later, after October, 1976, when I first encountered T. S. Elot and The Waste Land, I came to resent the way Pound had emasculated the manuscript.  But Pound's Pisan Cantos (written after the collapse of Fascism in Italy, during Pound's incarceration in (and yes, this is true) an open air cage, with a single blanket, and only a roll of toilet paper on which to write) were the shining jewels in the massive shipwreck that is The Cantos.  A couple of days ago, I read the 81st Canto as if for the first time:  being able to relate to it, as an old decrepit man in failing health, as I could never relate in my younger years.  The irony, almost a comedy, is that Pound---the first Poet I ever really studied (although compelled to do so)---returned to me just a couple of days ago to remind me that what a Poet loves well becomes the Poet's heritage and shall not be taken away.  Ro learn this from Pound---not Eliot, not Stevens, not even Vergil, but Pound of all writers---is a delicious joke upon me.  And I wanted to share the giggles with postpoems.