Sherry Chandler

My poem “After Thirteen Weeks” is featured this week on Janet Nesler’s Poet’s Platform, along with a nice one from Ernie O’Dell. Poet’s Platform is a weekly feature in the Scioto Voice of Wheelersburg, Ohio.

Charles Bernstein, in his introduction to the section on Ezra Pound in Poetry Speaks, says this:

Pound’s troubling politics are interwoven throughout his work with his poetics and aesthetics, making for a useful, albeit sometimes distasteful, study of the unavoidable relation of poetry to politics. (p,76)

Here is some political Pound, sections IV and V of “Hugh Selwyn Mauberley.” Written in 1920, its story has been repeated again and again in my one short lifetime.

IV
These fought in any case,
and some believing,
         pro domo in any case…

Some quick to arm,
some for adventure,
some from fear of weakness,
some from fear of censure,
some for love of slaughter, in imagination,
learning later…
some in fear, learning love in slaughter;

Died some, pro patria,
         non “dulce” non “et decor”…
walked eye-deep in hell
believing in old men’s lies, then unbelieving
came home, home to a lie,
home to many deceits,
home to old lies and new infamy;
usury age-old and age-thick
and liars in public places.

Daring as never before, wastage as never before.
Young blood and high blood,
fair cheeks, and fine bodies;

fortitude as never before

frankness as never before,
disillusions as never told in the old days,
hysterias, trench confessions,
laughter out of dead bellies.

V
There died a myriad,
And of the best, among them,
For an old bitch gone in the teeth,
For a botched civilization,

Charm, smiling at the good mouth,
Quick eyes gone under earth’s lid,

For two gross of broken statues,
For a few thousand battered books.