Notes from the Bughouse
Or, that time a fascist collaborator held a poetry salon on the lawn of a mental hospital
This weekend I visited a friend at a remarkable rural community where she’s lived for many years. Next week I’ll explore intentional communities here on the blog, including Brook Farm, the short-lived Transcendentalist experiment where Nathaniel Hawthorne hoed potatoes in the 1840s.
Today, because Ezra Pound came up in conversation, I’m editing and resharing this post. Pound’s path from mentor of modernist American poets to radio propagandist for Mussolini still fascinates and unnerves me. How did he go off the rails so badly (had he ever been on them?), and why did some writers stand by him despite his treason? Who stands by him now, knowingly or unknowingly?
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