Charles Jensen | Writer

That’s the brief note marked by the former owner of my copy of Twentieth Century American Poetics: Poets on the Art of Poetry. It appears here:

Hired to talk about literary matters, Pound could nt resist the opportunity to promulgate his political views. His broadcasts were self-indulgent and digressive to the point of incoherence, but there was no mistaking his devotion to fascism, his hatred of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and his virulent anti-Semitism. (Pound’s talks were so chaotic and bizarre that some Italian officials suspected he was an American spy broadcasting in a secret code.)