My Way_ Speeches and Poems - Charles Bernstein

P 0 U N DAN D THE POE TRY 0 F T 0 DAY 157
means thinking through the implications of poetic structures, rather than
imagining them ever to be neutral or transparent. A poem including history
means we must read the history too, and this history is writ in the
style, in the symbolic/semiotic economy of the poem, in the material
means of production, as much as in Pound's "disembodied" "ideas".
Poetry is not worth reading because it is comfortable or happy or
understandable or uplifting, any more than history or philosophy is. Nor
does reading for a politics of poetic form mean that forms are liberating;
more often we find that, as Ray DiPalma once suggested, all forms are
coercive. 1 If one starts with the assumption that a poetry should be truthful
or beautiful, that its meaning should transcend the circumstances of its
production-then of course talk of the politics of Pound's poetic forms will
seem dismissive of Pound's work, since it pulls that work down from the
heights of poetic vanity into the real-politics of the actual poem in actual
history.
People say, Pound was deluded, Pound was insane, Pound was paranoid,
Pound was delusional, as a way to explain away, or possibly contextualize,
his fascism. I don't doubt this, but it doesn't get me anywhere.
Fascism itself was (Is) delusional and paranoid, and Hitler and Mussolini
and Goebbels are certifiable in my book, as are the shouting Brown Shirts
pictured in Triumph of the Will (don't we call this "mass hysteria"?). I agree
with Pierre joris that what's important to understand as we approach the
end of this long century is the nature of this delusion, of this insanity, that
has attracted so many otherwise admirable, sometimes brilliant, people,
groups, indeed cultures. Of course Pound was delusional during the period
of his Radio Speeches; reading Pound means reading through these
delusions, trying to come to terms with them. It doesn't mean that in
making these judgments one is free of one's own delusions, or that such
a reading gives a complete account of his poetic works, which demands
multiple, contradictory, readings.
Pound was not just a fascist; he had different politics, and poetics, at
different points in his life and even at some of the same points. Nicholls
notes that from 1930 to 1937, Pound was eager to keep a dialogue open
with the American left; and earlier in his life his views seemed more left
than right, although, reading Nicholls, one begins to see this as much as
a weakness in the left/right distinction as an inconsistency on Pound's part.
Nicholls also shows that "perhaps the most disquieting thing about
[Pound's] savage propaganda is that it was to some degree an extension of
ideas that had governed the earlier Cantos" (156). Indeed, Nicholls's trac-
1. Ray DiPalma, "Tying and Untying", in The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book, ed. Bruce Andrews
and Charles Bernstein (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984), p. 14.