Pound of the Beats

Pound of the Beats On Allen Ginsbergʼs and Lawrence Ferlinghettiʼs image of Ezra Pound Jakub Guziur University of New York in Prague, Czech Republic Abstract The essay describes the image of the American modernist poet Ezra Pound as presented by the best-known representative of the Beat Generation Allen Ginsberg and the San Francisco poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Ginsbergʼs appraisal of Pound is seen as integral to his long-time effort to gain wider recognition for the work of the Beats. The development of Ferlinghettiʼs views of Pound is outlined, attention is paid not only to the poetʼs literary work, but also to his art. Keywords: poetry; modernism; avant-garde; literary criticism; fascism; American poetry; Ezra Pound; the Beat Generation; Allen Ginsberg; Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Address University of New York in Prague The Department of Communication and Mass Media Studies Londýnská 41 120 00 Praha [email protected] fixed eye & sharp tongue from Pound1 Allen Ginsberg The post-World War II image of Ezra Pound (1885–1972) has not been shaped only by his infamous wartime pro-Fascist and often viciously anti-Semitic broadcasts for the Rome Radio (Radio Roma) which led to his indictment for treason and resulted in controversial incarceration at St. Elizabethʼs Hospital for the Criminally Insane. It has also been influenced by the views of the poet suggested by representatives of the Beat movement, predominantly by Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997), and poets associated with the Beats, especially Lawrence Ferlinghetti (*1919). For the fellow authors Ginsberg tried to play the same role as Pound did for many of the modernists. Apart from becoming the author of the referential work of the Beat Generation, Ginsberg – very much like Pound in the first decades of the 20th century – set out on the mission to creating a cultural milieu favorable to his colleagues. It involved encouraging his Beat fellows and tirelessly propagating their works, sometimes also materially supporting them or mediating such support. In his theoretical texts, lectures and interviews Ginsberg stressed what the individual Beats and their works had in common. Throughout the years he organized numerous public readings, gatherings and happenings. He was trying to give the Beats – with their rather specific and individualistic personalities – a Allen Ginsberg, “‘What would you do if you lost it?’” in Collected Poems 1947–1997 (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 601. 1

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virtual shared space where they could feel interconnected.2 It is no great exaggeration to claim that Ginsberg almost single-handedly formed the image of the Beat movement which he managed to promote and maintain until it was recognized as an integral part of the post-World War II American culture. Ginsberg realized that without an honorable genealogy the provocative works of the Beats were to be dismissed as mere timely eccentricities. Throughout his career, Ginsberg was suggesting that he was drawing not only on the works of the two of the founders of the modern American literature, Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) and Walt Whitman (1819–1892),3 but also on the Poundian tradition, specifically on the writings of William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) and Ezra Pound4 whom he considered the heirs to Whitmanʼs heritage.5 In 1974 he claimed in an interview: So what we were doing, what I am doing, what everybody whoʼs been involved in the poetic renaissance since the fifties has been doing, has to a great extent been based on Pound and Williams.6 William Carlos Williams helped Ginsberg with understanding the modernist poetics; he showed interest in the young poet’s work and provided much needed stimuli and encouragement.7 He incorporated two of the Ginsberg’s letters into the fourth book of his poetic sequence Paterson (1951).8 Williams wrote introductory texts to two of Ginsberg’s early poetry collections;9 his introduction to Howl reflects the author’s sensitivity and openness to Ginsberg’s radical poetics and demonstrates an unusual degree of enthusiasm and admiration the renown poet felt towards his young fellow. Nevertheless, Ginsberg usually For a detailed account of Ginsbergʼs forming of the Beat generation see Jonah Raskin, American Scream: Allen Ginsbergʼs Howl and the Making of the Beat Generation (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005). Hereafter cited as Raskin, Scream. Ginsbergʼs long struggle for general recognition of the Beat Generation is described by his friend and collaborator Ed Sanders in his book-length biographical poem, see Edward Sanders, The Poetry and Life of Allen Ginsberg (New York: The Overlook Press, 2000), 205–206. Hereafter cited as Sanders, Poetry and Life. 3 See Sanders, Poetry and Life, 14, 38, 48, 227. 4 See Allen Ginsberg, “Meditation and Poetics,” in Deliberate Prose: Selected Essays 1952–1995, ed. Bill Morgan (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 265–6. It is worth noticing that Ginsberg tended to marginalize the influence of the American modernist authors who did not belong to the Poundian tradition but were often connected with the Beat Generation by contemporary criticism, e.g. Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) or Kenneth Fearing (1902–1961). See e.g. Allen Ginsberg, “When the Mode of the Music Changes, the Walls of the City Shake,” in Deliberate Prose: Selected Essays 1952–1995, ed. Bill Morgan (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 249. 5 See Allen Ginsberg, “Whitmanʼs Influence: A Mountain Too Vast to Be Seen,” in Deliberate Prose: Selected Essays 1952–1995, ed. Bill Morgan (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 332. 6 Michael Goodwin, Richard Hyatt, and Ed Ward, „Squawks Mid-Afternoon,“ in Allen Ginsberg. Spontaneous Mind: Selected Interviews 1958–1996, ed. David Carter (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 375. Hereafter cited as Goodwin, “Squawks.” Analogies between Ginsbergʼs and Poundʼs work – specifically between Howl (1956) and the so-called Hell Cantos (XIV and XV, 1924) – were recognized as early as 1957 when they were stressed by the defense during the infamous obscenity trial which made the Beat poet world-famous. See Raskin, Scream, 223. 7 See Paul Portugés and Guy Amirthanayagam, “Buddhist Meditation and Poetic Spontaneity,“ in Allen Ginsberg. Spontaneous Mind: Selected Interviews 1958–1996, ed. David Carter (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 414. 8 See William Carlos Williams, Paterson (New York: New Directions, 1995), 172–174, 193. Cf. Allen Ginsberg, Journals: Early Fifties Early Sixties, ed. Gordon Ball (New York, Grove Press, 1992), 3. Hereafter cited as Ginsberg, Journals. 9 The two texts were reprinted in the Appendix for Ginsberg’s Collected Poems 1947–1980 and are kept in the current enlarged edition; see William Carlos Williams, “Introduction to Empty Mirror,” in Allen Ginsberg, Collected Poems 1947–1997 (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 817–8, William Carlos Williams, “Introduction to Howl,” in Allen Ginsberg, Collected Poems 1947–1997 (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 819–20. 2

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presented himself as Pound’s follower. He may have felt indebted to Williams too much, however, it seems more probable that Ginsberg considered Pound the genuine pioneer of the radical modernist poetics who – as the original poet and influential critic – in the first three decades of the 20th century managed to revive and energize the English poetry.10 It should be noted that Pound has always been more influential than Williams who in his later years was not as appreciated as he deserved, nor paid the proper critical attention. Unlike Williams, Pound was until the 1960s considered a radical and controversial personality. When he was meeting and corresponding with Williams, Pound – according to Ginsberg “the greatest poet of the age”11 – was incarcerated at St. Elizabethʼs Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Washington. The American political, social and cultural elites failed to take a clear and honest stand towards the poet and seemed feckless, which – along with Pound’s unyielding stubbornness – must have appealed greatly to Ginsberg. Pound at that time saw himself as “an exile in [his] country”12, Ginsberg’s feelings were quite similar. Moreover, for Ginsberg – who himself spent eight months in the New York State Psychiatric Institute13 – were poetry and madness naturally interconnected. Pound did not influence only Ginsberg’s poetics; the young poet studied Pound’s work in its entirety and embraced not only many of his views on the history of literature and culture, but also his monetary and economic theories which he considered precise and liberating.14 In 1957 in a poem “Death to Van Gogh’s Ear!” – written a year before the poet’s release from St. Elizabethʼs Hospital – Ginsberg suggests that Pound should be made “Secty. Economics”.15 In his “War Profit Litany”16 (1967) – a poem dedicated to Pound – Ginsberg subscribes to Pound’s opinion that wars are often started because they are profitable for private companies, which he demonstrates by referring to the contemporary American social and political reality.17 Shortly after Ezra Pound’s death in 1972 Ginsberg claimed that “Pound [...] unmasked or demystified the nature of banks and money and currency.”18 Ginsberg was of assimilating, integrating personality; unlike so many of his contemporaries, he seldom ever abused Pound – e.g. by scolding him publicly for his racist views – for cheap self-promotion.19 Ginsberg approached Pound’s involvement with fascism and his anti-Semitism which made him an easy target as parts of “character and humour, h-um-o-u-r, which is changeable.”20 Strangely enough, he accepted and used – in his criticism

See Goodwin, “Squawks,” 375. John Durham, “The Death of Ezra Pound,” in Allen Ginsberg. Spontaneous Mind: Selected Interviews 1958– 1996, ed. David Carter (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 347. Hereafter cited as Durham, “Death.” 12 Qtd. in Michael Reck, Ezra Pound: A Close-Up (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973), 84. Italics in the original text. Hereafter cited as Reck, Close-Up. 13 See Raskin, Scream, 90–103, 151. 14 See Allen Ginsberg, “1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention,” in Deliberate Prose: Selected Essays 1952–1995, ed. Bill Morgan (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 49; Paul Carroll, “The Playboy Interview,” in Spontaneous Mind: Selected Interviews 1958–1996, ed. David Carter (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 194. 15 Allen Ginsberg, “Death to Van Gogh’s Ear!” in Collected Poems 1947–1997 (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 177. 16 Allen Ginsberg, “War Profit Litany” in Collected Poems 1947–1997 (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 494. 17 According to Michael Reck, Ginsberg told Pound in 1966: “The more I read your poetry, the more I am convinced it is the best of its time. And your economics are right. We see it more and more in Vietnam. You showed us who’s making a profit out of war.” Qtd. in Reck, Close-Up, 154. 18 Durham, “Death,” 348. The following entry from Ginsberg’s journals reflects not only his attitude towards Pound, but also his own stance: “Pound went mad trying to make up just laws for ignorant men,” Ginsberg, Journals, 170. 19 According to Alan Levy, Pound’s companion Olga Rudge complained about several such cases. See Alan Levy, Ezra Pound: The Voice of Silence (New York: Permanent Press, 1983), 9–10. 20 Durham, “Death,” 349. 10

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and poetry21 – Pound’s concept of “usura”, usury, which is generally considered at least latently anti-Semitic. There are only a few critical remarks on Pound in Ginsberg’s poetry. In his later poetic sequence “Improvisation in Beijing” (1984) Ginsberg refers to Pound’s support of Italian Fascism: I write poetry because Ezra Pound saw an ivory tower, bet on one wrong horse, gave poets permission to write spoken vernacular idiom.22 In a poem “Fighting Phantoms Fighting Phantoms” (1983) Ginsberg observed: Fighting phantoms Ezra Pound hated some Jews some hated Pound23 Ginsberg was far from hating Pound; it is no accident that it was Ginsberg to whom Pound said: “But the worst mistake I made was that stupid, suburban prejudice of anti-Semitism.”24 Ginsberg chose Pound as his honorable predecessor; by doing so he tried to secure a specific place on the virtual map of American literature for himself and other representatives of the Beat Generation.25 He was presenting himself as the follower of a significant avantgarde movement of the 20th century English poetry which had already been academically recognized but had not yet lost all of its original energy, radicality and provocativeness. Throughout his career, Ginsberg was drawing on Pound’s poetics; he was stimulated by Pound’s strong emphasis on sensuality – visuality and musicality – of modernist poetry; he took over Pound’s concept of modernist poetic sequence.26 It is equally important that Ginsberg wanted to play the Poundian role of the poet as a culture hero – shaping his social and political environment – and embraced Pound’s sharp criticism of American culture and society.27 In this context, it is quite understandable that as late as in 1967 – at the peak of his fame – Ginsberg was still yearning for Pound’s blessing which he was finally given.28 See Allen Ginsberg, “A Collage of Haiku, Kerouacʼs Spontaneous Writ, Zengakuren Couplets, Tibetian MindTraining Slogans, And Blakeʼs Auguries,” in Deliberate Prose: Selected Essays 1952–1995, ed. Bill Morgan (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 160; Allen Ginsberg, “Pentagon Exorcism,” in Collected Poems 1947–1997 (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 491. 22 Allen Ginsberg, “Improvisation in Beijing,” in Collected Poems 1947–1997 (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 937. 23 Allen Ginsberg, “Fighting Phantoms Fighting Phantoms,” in Collected Poems 1947–1997 (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 884. 24 Qtd. in Reck, Close-Up, 154. 25 He was, in fact, acting in accordance with the modernist understanding of tradition as a personal project; according to Pound, artists are claiming tradition, creating a model for their own work from carefully selected works of the past, the value of such model is then proven by the quality of an artist’s work. See Ezra Pound, “The Tradition,” in Literary Essays of Ezra Pound (New York: New Directions, 1968), 91. 26 American poet and critic Richard Kostelanetz noted in 1970 that Pound’s “influence particularly persists in nearly every recent long poem in English, especially those that similarly aim to represent ‘an intellectual diary.’” Richard Kostelanetz, “Impounding Poundʼs Milestone,” in The Old Poetries and the New (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1981), 50. Hereafter cited as Kostelanetz, “Milestone.” He illustrates his opinion by listing a number of influential poetic sequences by American poets, including Ginsberg’s “Wichita Vortex Sutra” (1966). See Kostelanetz, “Milestone,” 50. 27 In 1958, shortly after his release from St. Elizabethʼs Hospital for the Criminally Insane, Pound declared that “All America is an insane asylum!” Qtd. in John Tytell, Ezra Pound: The Solitary Volcano (London: Bloomsbury, 1989), 327. A year later Ginsberg noted: “Ezra Pound is right the nation is / an insane asylum.” Ginsberg, Journals, 112. 28 Ginsberg tried to meet Pound at St. Elizabethʼs Hospital in 1953, however, the modernist poet refused to see him. See Raskin, Scream, 117. The two poets finally met in 1967 at the poetry festival in Spoleto, Italy; later that year Ginsberg was visiting Pound and his companion Olga Rudge in Rapallo and Venice. One of their conversations is described in detail by Michael Reck; See Reck, Close-Up, 150–157. For Ginsberg’s journal 21

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Although Lawrence Ferlinghetti does not belong among the Beats, he is often associated with them. His role in forming of the Beat Generation was rather practical: at his City Lights he published some of the defining works of the Beats and offered them a public space for meetings and readings. Besides being socially, culturally and politically non-conformist, thematically and formally open and often deliberately provocative, Ferlinghetti’s work shares with the writings of the Beats a great emphasis on orality. Like the Beats, Ferlinghetti often presented his works at public readings and wrote texts to be accompanied by improvised jazz music. However, his poetic genealogy seems to be very different. Even though he has never denied the influence of the modernists – specifically of Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot (1888– 1965) –, his poetry is drawing more on some of the avant-garde – e.g. Jean Cocteau (1889– 1963) – and post-World War II popular French poets, especially Jacques Prévert (1900– 1977). The influence of the French poets can be seen in certain playfulness, sometimes even exuberance, which comes out of Ferlinghettiʼs fascination with imagination in relation to its language expression, but also in rhetorical abundance, satiric mood, scolding tone and repetitiveness. In this respect, Allen Ginsbergʼs comment on Ferlinghetti seems appropriate: Ferlinghetti is a champ. His poetry, though, seems a little too referential, dependent on puns, on atmosphere and French mood rather than on the kind of precision that Ezra Pound or Williams would ask for.29 At the end of the 1960s, Ferlinghetti suddenly started to be very critical to Pound; he criticized him for his wartime support of the Italian Fascism and in his poetic pamphlet “Tyrannus Nix?” (1969) indirectly blamed him for post-war hypocrisy: Nixon Nixon [...] Arenʼt you actually as homey and honest as Uncle Ezra30

Since then Ferlinghetti rather obsessively criticizes the poetics of the Poundian tradition. He tried to summarize his – rather unclear – reservations in a comment on the celebrated and influential Hayden Carruthʼs (1921–2008) anthology of the 20th century American poetry The Voice that is Great within Us (1970) which is dedicated “To E.P. / from us all.”31 In a short article “Modern Poetry is Prose” (1978) Ferlinghetti claims that the 20th century American poets mistake prose for poetry, “albeit in the typography of poetry.”32 According to Ferlinghetti, “Modern poetry is prose because it doesnʼt have much duende, dark spirit of earth and blood, no soul of dark song, no passion musick.”33 He criticizes the seminal works of modernist poetry for not being music or songs; Ferlinghetti notes that Eliotʼs Four Quartets (1944) “canʼt be played on any instrument”34 and that Poundʼs Cantos “arenʼt canti because they couldn’t be possibly sung”35; he also mentions works by Marianne Moore (1887–1972),

entries concerning his meetings with Pound see Allen Ginsberg, “Encounters with Ezra Pound,” in Composed on the Tongue (San Francisco: Grey Fox Press, 2001), 1–17. 29 Josef Jařab, “May 17–18, 1989,” in Spontaneous Mind: Selected Interviews 1958–1996, ed. David Carter (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 509. 30 Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Tyrannus Nix? (New York: New Directions, 1969), 9, 10. 31 Hayden Carruth, ed., The Voice that is Great Within Us (New York: Bantam Books, 1970), xvii. 32 Lawrence Ferlinghetti, “Modern Poetry is Prose,” in Poetry as Insurgent Art (New York: New Directions, 2007), 85. Hereafter cited as Ferlinghetti, “Poetry.” 33 Ferlinghetti, “Poetry,” 86. Italics in the original text. 34 Ferlinghetti, “Poetry,” 88. 35 Ferlinghetti, “Poetry,” 88. Italics in the original text.

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Karl Shapiro (1913–2000) and William Carlos Williams. Ferlinghetti concludes with a rather dramatic disclosure: All of which is applauded by poetry professors and poetry reviewers in all the best places, none of whom will commit the original sin of saying some poet’s poetry is prose in the typography of poetry – just as the poet’s friends will never tell him, just as the poet’s editors will never say it – the dumbest conspiracy of silence in the history of letters.36 Ferlinghetti’s objections to modernist poetics – expressed in the mentioned article and in his two well-known poetic pamphlets, fittingly named “Populist Manifestoes”37 (1976 and 1978) – seem to come out of his conviction that the modernist works were not accessible enough to the reading public. According to Ferlinghetti, Walt Whitman, Charles Chaplin, Woody Guthrie, the Beats and Bob Dylan achieved more.38 It should be noticed that such criticism of the modernist concept of the musicality of poetry is quite rare. Allen Ginsberg was often stressing that the conscious effort of the songwriters of the 1960s and 1970s – namely Bob Dylan – to write sophisticated lyrics of distinctive poetic qualities should be seen as a direct continuation of the work of the Poundian tradition.39 Ferlinghetti’s criticism of the Poundian tradition seems populist, perhaps even hypocritical; it does not stop the San Francisco poet from drawing on the Poundian poetics which has become even more evident since the end of the 1970s. Strangely enough, Ferlinghetti – like Ginsberg – occasionally uses Pound’s concept of usura, e.g. in his poetic sequence A Far Rockaway of the Heart (1997),40 intended as a sequel to his A Coney Island of the Mind (1958). The eleventh installment of the work presents Ferlinghetti’s reckoning with Pound whom he addresses as “the Rip van Winkle of American Poetry.”41 Ferlinghetti acknowledges the value of Pound’s pioneering work and the beauty of some of his poems. He repeats that Cantos are impossible to be sung and criticizes at length Pound’s pre-World War II and wartime support of Italian Fascism which he considers “cunning” (furbo): And it was you then who stoked the wood into the fascist flame in the blind worldʼs fire Old radio-fascist Rip ‘Lord Ga Gaʼ (as the good doctor called you) Furbo Muso-phile who gave the fascist salute to friends mouthing off on Radio Roma Ferlinghetti, “Poetry,” 88–9. See Lawrence Ferlinghetti, “Populist Manifesto #1,” in Poetry as Insurgent Art (New York: New Directions, 2007), 69–75; Lawrence Ferlinghetti, “Populist Manifesto #2,” in Poetry as Insurgent Art (New York: New Directions, 2007), 76–84. Hereafter cited as Ferlinghetti, “Manifesto 2.” 38 Cf. Ferlinghetti, “Manifesto 2,” 76–84. 39 See Allen Ginsberg, “Statement [On Censorship],” in Deliberate Prose: Selected Essays 1952–1995, ed. Bill Morgan (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 179; Allen Ginsberg, “Some Metamorphoses of Personal Prosody,” in Deliberate Prose: Selected Essays 1952–1995, ed. Bill Morgan (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 259; Michael Aldrich, Edward Kissam, and Nancy Blecker, “Improvised Poetics,” in Spontaneous Mind: Selected Interviews 1958–1996, ed. David Carter (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 158. In his essay on Pound’s Cantos, Richard Kostelanetz expressed the same view. See Kostelanetz, “Milestone,” 50. 40 See Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A Far Rockaway of the Heart (New York: New Directions, 1997), 11. Hereafter cited as Ferlinghetti, Rockaway. 41 Ferlinghetti, Rockaway, 15. 36 37

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and in vain Venezia42 Ferlinghetti prizes Pisan Cantos (1948) written in an American military detention center near the Italian town of Pisa, however, he sharply denounces Poundʼs later work composed of “the broken sentences / Fit to print on marble.”43 Even this notion seems questionable, some of the later cantos – especially the ones published in the last installment Drafts and Fragments of Cantos CX–CXVII (1969) – are more comprehensible than Pisan Cantos which contain numerous obscure or very personal references understandable only to those who knew Pound intimately or to the Pound scholars. Ridiculing his return to Italy, Ferlinghetti notes that Pound did not pay attention to the work of the Beats: Until at last released – Old Rip himself sprung from the Catskills of his own deep slumber (having not read or rolled the psychedelic papers of the new consciousness) Then split straightaway back to the Old World the crenelated camembert of Olde Europa44 Ferlinghetti begins his castigation by paraphrasing Poundʼs well-known poem “A Pact” from his early collection Lustra (1916) in which the modernist poet comes to terms with Walt Whitman. Pound who “detested [Whitman] long enough”45 returns to him as a “grown child”46 realizing they “have one sap and one root.”47 The poem suggests that Pound accepts Whitmanʼs heritage which can be understood as the task of creating an all-encompassing work establishing the new myth. Ferlinghetti in his poem presents himself as an accomplished poet who has decided to refuse the legacy of the “dear master” and “better craftsman”: I would not make a pact with you

old white man old E.P. old master poet

caro maestro

il miglior fabbro [...]

I loved you long enough And then unloved you long enough48 Ferlinghettiʼs denouncement of Pound and the Poundian tradition can hardly be taken seriously. In 2004 he published the first installment of an ambitious poetic sequence Americus; the structure of the work is obviously derived from the model of Poundʼs Cantos, and it also shares its aim – to outline the new myth to live by. Moreover, the poem contains Ferlinghetti, Rockaway, 16–7. Let the reader of this essay decide whether Ferlinghettiʼs own poems can be sung and are not, in fact, prose in the typography of poetry. 43 Ferlinghetti, Rockaway, 15. 44 Ferlinghetti, Rockaway, 17. 45 Ezra Pound, “A Pact,” in Poems & Translations, ed. Richard Sieburth (New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 2003), 269. Hereafter cited as Pound, “Pact.” 46 Pound, “Pact,” 269. 47 Pound, “Pact,” 269. 48 Ferlinghetti, Rockaway, 15. 42

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numerous quotations and paraphrases of Poundʼs, Eliotʼs and Williamsʼ poetic sequences. Throughout the poem, Ferlinghetti repeats his objections and accusations, often using rather similar phrasing: Though some like Ezra Pound turned their backs on America and took ship for the last time back to the crenelated camembert of olde Europa on the SS Cristòforo Colombo – it too having reversed course49 Surprisingly, in the notes to the second installment of Americus named Time of Useful Consciousness (2012) – which, in fact, presents only a new arrangement of previously published poems – Ferlinghetti states that his work is “in tradition of William Carlos Williamsʼ Paterson, Charles Olsonʼs Maximus [Poems], Allen Ginsbergʼs Fall of America, and Ed Sandersʼ America: A History in Verse.”50 Even in his most recent collection Blasts Cries Laughter (2014) Ferlinghetti quotes from Poundʼs poems.51 Since the 1950s Ferlinghetti has aspired to become a painter. Similarly to his poetry, Ferlinghettiʼs art seems to be highly derivative; as he confesses, in art he has always identified with the most influential artists of his generation: Franz Kline (1910–1962), Robert Motherwell (1915–1991), Willem de Kooning (1904–1997), Larry Rivers (1923–2002) and R.B. Kitaj (1932–2007).52 Because of Ferlinghettiʼs obsessive reckoning with Pound, it is no wonder that his view of the modernist poet has become the theme of two of his later paintings. “Ezra Pound” (2009)53 seems as a mere variation of a segment of his “Palimpsest of Ezra Pound” (1995),54 thus, it is sufficient to comment on the earlier work.

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Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Americus I (New York: New Directions, 2004), 77. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Time of Useful Consciousness: Americus II (New York: New Directions, 2012), 89. 51 See Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Blasts Cries Laughter (New York: New Directions, 2014), 8, 40. The name of the collection possibly refers to the modernist magazine Blast (1914–1915), edited by Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957) and containing several contributions by Ezra Pound. Both published numbers included long lists of individuals, institutions and various phenomena which should be BLASTED. See Wyndham Lewis (ed.), BLAST 1 (Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 1997), 11–21; Wyndham Lewis (ed.), BLAST 2 (Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 2000), 92. 52 See Lawrence Ferlinghetti, “Foreword,” in Life Studies: Life Stories (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2003), 5. For an overview of Ferlinghettiʼs art see Sandra Giannattasio (ed.), Ferlinghetti: The Poet as Painter – Dipinti dal 1959 al 1996 (Roma: Progetti Museali Editore, 1996), hereafter cited as Giannattasio, Ferlinghetti, Painter; Giada Diano and Elisa Polimeni (eds.), Lawrence Ferlinghetti: 60 anni di pittura / 60 Years of Painting (Milano: Silvana Editoriale, 2010), hereafter cited as Diano, Ferlinghetti, Painting. 53 See Diano, Ferlinghetti, Painting, 163. 54 See Giannattasio, Ferlinghetti, Painter, 199. 50

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Ferlinghetti juxtaposes Poundʼs images coming from different periods of the modernist poetʼs life, the images are mostly derived from well-known artworks: in the middle right segment there is an imitation of the famous drawing of young Pound by the modernist sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (1891–1915) which has been used by New Directions on the covers of the American editions of Poundʼs books;55 the middle left segment contains a paraphrase of Horst Tappeʼs photography of the aged poet known from the cover of John Tytellʼs biography of Pound.56 Translation of time into space may allude to Poundʼs observation that “all times are contemporaneous.”57 Ferlinghettiʼs arrangement of verbal and visual expression is perhaps supposed to be a trans-medial analogue of Poundʼs ideogrammic method based on juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated images.

See e.g. Ezra Pound, Personæ: The Shorter Poems, ed. Lea Baechler and A. Walton Litz (New York: New Directions, 1990). 56 See John Tytell, Ezra Pound: Solitary Volcano (London: Bloomsbury, 1989). 57 Ezra Pound, The Spirit of Romance (New York: New Directions, 2005), 6. 55

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The two female figures in the middle segment probably represent Poundʼs wife Dorothy Shakespeare and Olga Rudge, his long-time companion. The meaning of the black and white human silhouettes is unclear, they can allude to other women who played important roles in Poundʼs life, or perhaps to the victims of the first and/or second World War. Silhouettes of flying birds probably refer to Poundʼs restless life of an exile. They can also be connected with vortex – the aesthetic principle promoted by Vorticism, an avant-garde movement Pound participated in. The painting as such can be described as a metaphoric whirlpool of one life. Poundʼs words used in the painting also come from different periods of his career. Ferlinghetti quotes the modernistʼs adaptation of the song by Bertran of Born which was published in Poundʼs first collection A Lume Spento (1908),58 the first line of “A Pact”, and the beginning of the first of Poundʼs Cantos.59 “[I was] baffled into silence” is a variant of a phrase used by Pound to explain the silence of his final years.60 The slogan “I love Muss.” with signature “Lord Ga-Ga”61 is Ferlinghettiʼs vicious fabrication. The three floating swastikas are ideologically and historically inappropriate and seem rather tawdry. This conceptually and artistically unconvincing work hardly presents the palimpsest of Ezra Pound, it rather seems to represent the dynamics of Ferlinghettiʼs relationship to Pound which has been reduced to pretentious accusations. Michael Reck noted in 1969 that Ezra Pound had been in his later years “often viciously abused.”62 Considering Ferlinghettiʼs populist criticism, it seems that Reckʼs opinion still rings true. Reck was obviously wrong when he assumed that in fifty years people would forget about Poundʼs controversial politics and remember his artistic achievements.63 In the second decade of the 21st century, Pound is reduced to an image – a shadow of his face and fame, often underlined by a slogan. The reasons are many, one of them was suggested by Charles Bukowski (1920–1994)64 in “What they want”: Vallejo writing about loneliness while starving to death; Van Goghʼs ear rejected by a whore; Rimbaud running off to Africa to look for gold and finding an incurable case of syphilis; See Ezra Pound, “Na Audiart,” in Poems & Translations, ed. Richard Sieburth (New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 2003), 26. 59 Ezra Pound, The Cantos (New York: New Directions, 1995), 3. 58

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Cf. Charles Norman, Ezra Pound: A Biography (London: Macdonald, 1969), 466. Pound was called “Lord Ga-Ga” by William Carlos Williams; the alias alludes to Lord Haw-Haw, i.e. William Joyce, a British citizen who participated in the wartime Nazi propaganda. See Hugh Witemeyer (ed.), Selected Letters of Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams (New York: New Directions, 1996), 126. 62 Reck, Close-Up, 157. 63 See Reck, Close-Up, viii. 64 There are various comments on Pound scattered throughout Bukowskiʼs poems and letters, e.g. “I guess Stravinsky Pound / John Fante to be the best men / of our age.” Charles Bukowski, Screams from the Balcony: Selected Letters 1960–1970, ed. Seamus Cooney (New York: HarperCollins, 2002), 187. Bukowski discussed his views of Pound openly in correspondence with the painter and writer Sheri Martinelli (1918–1996) who had been visiting Pound at St. Elizabethʼs Hospital. See Charles Bukowski and Sheri Martinelli, Beerspit Night and Cursing: The Correspondence of Charles Bukowski and Sheri Martinelli 1960–1967, ed. Steven Moore (New York: HarperCollins, 2001). 61

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Beethoven gone deaf; Pound dragged through the streets in a cage; Chatterton taking rat poison; Hemingwayʼs brains dropping into the orange juice [...]. – thatʼs what they want: a God damned show a lit billboard in the middle of hell. thatʼs what they want, that bunch of dull inarticulate safe dreary admirers of carnivals.65

Charles Bukowski, “What they want,” in Love is a Dog from Hell (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 82. The first volume of Bukowskiʼs posthumously published poems contains an interesting variant of the poem; it begins with a confession: “yes, Iʼm a Romantic, overly sentimental, / something of a hero worshipper, / and I do / not apologize for this.” The poem continues with a long description of various hardships of artists – including Poundʼs – and concludes: “still, these men and women / – past and present – / have created and are creating / new worlds for / the rest of us, / despite the fire and despite the ice, / despite the / hostility of governments, / despite the ingrown distrust of the masses, / only to die / singly / and usually / alone. // youʼve got to admire them all / for the courage, / for the effort, / for their best and at their / worst. // some gang! / they are a source of light! / they are a source of joy! // All of them / heroes you can be / grateful for / and admire from afar / as you wake up / from your ordinary dreams / each morning.” Charles Bukowski, „A Sickness?“ in New Poems: Book 1, ed. John Martin (London: Virgin Books, 2003), 116, 121. 65

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