Jackson's Actions

I don't think I can do a chapter by chapter recap of this book. It is an amazing book but not a poetry theory book, nor essays on poetry--which is my usual reading. This is, instead, a surprising and astonishing history of the three winters (1913 - 1916) that William Butler Yeats and Ezra Pound lived together in a country cottage in Sussex -- and how that experience shaped the work of each giant poet as well as the future of poetry in the Modernist Movement.

Longenbach has outdone himself with fantastic research on this subject matter. He has used previously unpublished letters and work, and provides insights into the poems themselves that resulted from the union of the senior Yeats (20 yrs. older than his young secretary and friend).

Being an ignorant student, I learned things that I never before knew and was naively shocked by much of the information. I shall try to outline some of the notes I made:

Both Yeats and Pound were insufferable snobs, yearning to elevate themselves above their middle-class backgrounds to aristocracy. They despised "the masses," "the mob," and wanted an exclusive club of artists whose work was suitable only for the superiority of the intelligentsia. (this of course included the rich, the nobility,
and the patrons of the arts.) Distribution of art to the public was disdained, and such artists were demeaned and belittled publicly, even vehemently, especially by Pound. He comes off as the most aggressive, unpleasant, disdainful young poet one could imagine. His coup of meeting, and working for, and then living with Yeats was exploited to the max, but Yeats shared much of his distorted values and supported his tirades and positions wholeheartedly.

Both Yeats and Pound seriously explored and believed in the occult. They participated in seances, automatic writing, and studied arduously the true-life accounts of visionaries and spirit chasers. They incorporated such belief systems into their work, their philosophies and used it as a basis for their "secret society" of the "Brothers Minor," a private club of two, who held themselves superior to all other living poets.

They were proponents of the Imagist movement, evolving to Vorticism which Pound wanted to differentiate from the "debased literary symbolism." Pound said "to explain a symbol is to destroy its ability to embody the divine or permanent world; knowledge that could be understood by the uninitiated masses would not be knowledge at all." The occult and the obscure were his goals.

Both poets had hoped to make a new art community (albeit it an exclusive one) in London but World War I dashed all their dreams, especially Pound's. The war had huge effects on both men, even though they ostensibly tried to ignore it, finding the rabid patriotism offensive. But both were deeply affected in the end.

They both wrote plays, trying to employ their imagist ideas but wanted them performed in private estate houses, not public theaters. Japanese Noh plays influenced both of their work (Pound did translations).

Most shocking of all was both men's allegiance to Mussolini. Pound never relinquished his loyalty to fascism and paid the price in later life. Even James Joyce, who became part of their coterie, had dubious allegiances early in the
movement. Their elitism ran deep and pure but Yeats eventually softened whereas
Pound never did in his political stance.

This is a fascinating book. I recommend it to anyone seriously interested in the
major poets of the last century. I was appalled and amused, dismayed and confused
but never bored by a word of it. I have the utmost respect for the talents of James Longenbach (who I had the pleasure of hearing lecture at Warren Wilson College this year) who brings fresh and jaw-dropping insights into this pair of Modernism's controversial figures.


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Other Notes on Poetry on this Blog

Louise Gluck

Stephen Dobyns

Heather McHugh

Mary Oliver

Poets Teaching Poets

Alan Shapiro

Rainer Maria Rilke (Gass)

Edward Hirsch