Last Thursday evening, American poet and critic James Longenbach gave a presentation on Ezra Pound’s life, including his infamous and short-lived tenure here at Wabash College.
Dr. Longenbach’s talk, “Pound at Home: The Crawfordsville State of Mind,” coincided with the centennial of the poet’s departure from the College. Dr. Longenbach, a professor of English at the University of Rochester, said that when he was younger he only learned the basics about Mr. Pound, but his life changed one day when he walked into a bookstore and found the ultimate treasure.
“Seventy years after Pound bought the Odyssey, I walked into a bookstore in Hartford, Connecticut in the fall of 1978,” Longenbach said. “And there on the used book table just into the door was a copy of the Cantos of Ezra Pound. A big, thick, expensive book, and the price was a dollar. I heard enough about Pound to know that I ought to know more. I snatched the book, laid down a dollar, and ran out of the store.”
Mr. Pound was hired by the president of the College, George Macintosh, in the fall of 1907 to teach French and Spanish, but was not without his predictable tensions. He smoked cigarettes, failed to show up regularly at Chapel, dressed in a peculiar fashion, and had weekly soirees. Dr. Longenbach described this as Mr. Pound playing the “mildly outrageous artist.”
Mr. Pound’s tenure at Wabash may have been brief, but it will never be forgotten. A notorious character, Mr. Pound was no stranger to controversy and scandal. Perhaps his most notorious story includes a night alone with a female/male impersonator from a vaudeville show in Crawfordsville. Two students walked in on Mr. Pound while he was at his apartment, and rumors spread like wild fire. Dr. Longenbach’s talk focused on the aspect of exile in\ Mr. Pound’s life, but the truth is that Pound never actually lived in exile.
“Crawfordsville, London, Paris, Rapallo – Pound never lived in exile, he lived at home,” Longenbach said. “Home sounds less interesting, less exotic or challenging than exile…or does it? There’s something chilling about the author who never changes, who continually recreates the terms of his own failure so that he might enjoy a strange species of success in his life.”
Professor of English Marc Hudson enjoyed the presentation and “loved” how Dr. Longenbach connected Pound with Wabash and his overall envision of Pound as someone who continually and happily repeated himself.
“Pound has inspired me, but I have a love/hate relationship with him, as I think most people do,” Dr. Hudson said. “He writes these large, impossible to understand poems, but he is quite a musician. The Cantos, in their section after section landscape, have always been intriguing to me, and he creates images that almost float transparently over the air and earth. Those moments of lyricism I deeply value and love Pound unabashedly.”
English Major Roger Market ’09 thought the talk was interesting, and he was even able to learn a little about Mr. Pound’s writing.
“I never knew that he wrote about Crawfordsville, but it was never explicit that the ‘middle Indiana’ he wrote about was Crawfordsville,” Market said. “Unless you know the biographical history of Ezra Pound, you wouldn’t know that, so I thought that was pretty cool.”
Senior Matt Maher echoed Mr. Market’s comments. “I thought the talk was pretty insightful and Longenbach was very poetic in just the way that he speaks, and it felt like it was a very sincere representation of what he thought of Pound, who he was, his tenure here at Wabash, and then his time outside,” Maher said. “I thought he gave a great presentation and made a great argument for the
‘never an exile, always at home,’ and I found that extremely interesting.”
Archivist Beth Swift knows much about the life of Ezra Pound and recalled her favorite anecdote of Pound, involving research done by Jim Rader ’60 on Mr. Pound, which resulted in Mr. Pound writing a letter back to Mr. Rader.
“As a student Jim became fascinated with Pound’s time here,” Swift said. “He interviewed everyone that he could find who knew Pound in 1907- 08. In the 1950’s, there were still a lot of people in town who had connections with the poet, and there were also still a number of Pound’s students among the alumni. He collected these interviews, did additional research, and wrote to Pound in Rapallo, Italy and received two letters in return. We have one scanned and in the display. His collection is a phenomenal resource for those who seek Pound at Wabash.”
In addition to the display in the exhibit case, the archives have a selection of articles for students and faculty who want a snapshot of Mr. Pound. The archives have even gathered dozens of books from the library’s general collection about Pound and his work.
Although Mr. Pound has been deceased for decades, his transitory tenure at Wabash College will be a memory that will live on for another 100 years.
“I believe that the Ezra Pound of 1907-08 would do well at Wabash now,” Swift said. “Many of the behaviors that marked him as a character while at Wabash wouldn’t be the least bit shocking now. Having said that, I think Pound would still find it tough to be here, as he did a hundred years ago, although for different reasons. Pound spent his life searching, and it seems that none of the answers he sought could be found here.”