Lit Crit is where the $$$ at

Weird. Apparently James Blish, the SF writer, did his Masters thesis on Ezra Pound .... and actually SOLD it to The Sewanee Review for $375. (And that's in 1950 dollars, folks. Converting that into today's terms, that's around $4,111.)**

Anyway, I'm going through it .... and finding that it's eminently readable. Here is Blish, tackling the claim that Pound's poetry is contentless (that is, that his manner is his matter):

"To which one might respond that only in the universe of literature is it possible to say 'Nobody has yet found the Mississippi, if there is such a river,' years after it has been found and marked plainly on available maps in its proper location. It should not matter -- but it does -- that ten eminent men and forty parrots have said that there is no such place once these maps have been circulated, and other travelers have been there ....."

Which all had me chuckling, I have to admit. ("Ten men and forty parrots!") Overall, the argument is basically a series of defenses of Pound's Cantos against various charges:

1. Pound's Cantos don't have a structure -- but Blish says they do. (That's where the above gem comes in.)
2. Pound's fascism and anti-Semitism. Blish himself seems most sympathetic to the New Critical camp that views Pound's politics as irrelevant to his poetry -- notably, Blish often called himself a "book fascist," someone who likes the theory of fascism while denying that it could ever work in practice. The issue of anti-Semitism, though, is a more legitimate criticism on Blish's view. ... yet he only agrees with literary censorship if there's a "clear and present danger," and literature can never offer that, apparently. Censoring someone for their anti-Semitism is like outcasting someone for having leprosy -- and, yes, that's the exact comparison that Blish makes.
3. Pound is consciously archaic. Here, Blish tackles the idea that Pound's translations always seem to be bad -- i.e., his Greek, his Latin, his Provincal, and Chinese, but argues that Pound's attempts do show a knowledge of those languages. (Intriguingly, Blish never mentions Pound's translation of "The Seafarer" from Old English, which was also castigated by scholars ... and only redeemed by Fred C. Robinson in the 1980s. Granted, Pound's O.E. was excoriated only in 1954 by Kenneth Sisam, so a few years after Blish's article appeared.)
4. Pound is difficult. 
5. Pound is excessively violent: his imagery is obscene, scatological, diseased: his rages and loves are embarrassing, sentimental, false.
1. In this last respect, at least, Blish objects to the scatological humor. "The objection is not to the filth, but to its monotony. And in his scatological vein Pound is always bad. Even his wit fails him; he is not Rabelaisian, but only wearisome; he cannot even tell a dirty joke without ruining it (vide Canto XII)."

Blish, James. "Rituals on Ezra Pound." The Sewanee Review, 1950, vol. 58, no.2, pp. 185-225.

**Incidentally, it's that payment that Blish earned the sparked almost immediate amazement when I posted it on twitter ....