DK/Some Letters of Ezra Pound ed. by Louis Dudek (review)

406 LEITERS IN CANADA able increase in scholarly activity during the past quarter of a century, the study of Canadian literature is still enjoying its age of innocence. The canon of established writers is far from settled, or at least their appropriate evaluation. The empirical basis for judgement and generalization even now is in an early stage of being broadened and deepened. And it is still possible for the gifted amateur to rely on bold intelligence and flair and not to fear unduly the dogged professional gaining ground behind rum. (F.W. WATT) DKI Some Letters of Ezra Pound, edited with notes by Louis Dudek. o le Press, '145, $5.00 Robert Graves's 'There is one story and one story only' does not apply to Ezra Pound's twelve years at St Elizabeth's Hospital for the criminally insane in Washington, DC. Charles Norman, Noel Stock, Eustace Mullins, Michael Reck, and Harry Meacham have all written their versions of these years - and seven more accounts appear in the current Paideuma, a journal devoted to Pound scholarship. Louis Dudek's carefully annotated edition of Ezra Pound's letters to him is the most interesting of these books, in the reviewer's opinion, though, owing to Pound's crabbed and rushed epistolary style (evidenced by his abbreviation of Dudek's name in the title), it is not the most easily read. The annotations are graceful; the letters require rereading and study, as does so much of Pound's later work. Dudek's acquaintance with Ezra Pound began in '949 with a letter an appreciation of the Cantos and an offer to help in any way he could and continued through letters, intensively until '953, sporadically until 1967. Dudek did visit Pound in Washington in June '950, and his memories of Pound in the flesh round out Our impressions of Pound the letter writer. The result of the editor's comparative distance from the poet is that there are more ideas and less gossip in this book than in the more biographical works. There are also more of Pound's actual words. Everything Pound wrote is now carefully controlled by the Ezra Pound Literary Trust, a group which rarely grants publication rights. Two previous selections of letters - D.O. Paige's The Letters of Ezra Pound '907- 4' and Forrest Read's Pound-loyce - appeared with Pound's permission. Luckily, Mr Dudek also obtained permission from Pound before his death, and Pound himself censored those few names in uncomplimentary contexts which he wished to keep private. The letters are all reproduced in facsimile, beginning with a handwritten note on Pound's own stationery (which has the letterhead 'rayme, done je suis') and ending with a telegram : 'SORRY CANNOT COME [to Expo 67] O.R. INDISPOSED DOCTOR VETOES HER FLYING SAWTI POUND' (p 144). The HUMANITIES 407 letters in between touch on a multitude of subjects - modern history, the cost of running a printing press, notes on the Cantos, the neglected historian Alexander Del Mar, fascism, little magazines. Letter 2 contains Pound~s answer to a question about his racism: 'dividing line is not race but a cat is neither a dog nor a rabbit. Neither does one want cat to be doggy. nor vice versa.' (My quotation does not do justice to the arrangement of this handwritten note on the page). Letter 30 contains, surprisingly , an attempt by Pound to clarify his position on certain controversial issues and to clear his name. Pound wished Dudek to sign this statement and send it as his own to Karl Shapiro, then editor of Poetry, as Pound was not officially allowed to send letters himself and so could not sign it. Dudek naturally refused to put his name to someone else's writing and later tried to restore Pound's good name in other ways. The letter is surprising because Pound never shows much public concern for his reputation , political or literary, seeming to assume that his audience will discover the truth for themselves without a blanket statement from him. Finally, the letters offer criticism of Dudek's own work, his poetry, his translations , the little magazines - Contact, CIV/ n, Delta - in which he was...