Eleanor Ritchie at
Berkeley
described to EP admirers' discussions of his poems (6 November 1956, Beinecke).
Ezra-Pounds-Chinese-Friends-Stories-in-Letters
in it.
Wonder if I should send it to the Edge.
''The Grandfather Cycle'': a long poem of 101 cantos of which Wang Wnished Wfteen. Its Wrst four cantos appeared in the June 1957 issue of Poetry Broadside. See the Wrst Wfteen cantos in The Human Voice, 2/1 (1966), 31-6.
Romney: Barbara Romney, editor of Poetry Broadside.
156 EP to Wang (TL-1; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] 3 May [1957]
No objection to Marcella's having ideas, fancy or otherwise
incline to favor ACTivity/ as anthropologist, instructive to observe activity/ inactivity / vide Mang Tze, less phenomenal, ergo less food provided the observer.
190 from poetry to politics
///
Not all things from one man/
of the FEW (damn) bits of sapience from U. S. pragmatik.
''not what you know but whom you know''/
murkns enslaved cause wont communicate with each other/
not necessary to use their intelligence if they have mobilizable $ and enough
intelligence to permit extraction or direction of same/
Lee Lady has rustled $20 for Edg/etc. the HOPE of appearing shd/be used as lure tho subscribers are not REQuired to contribute their own compositions. And Graves (funereal name) can't be expected to consider Sharp a poet who
suggested that S/ was being inserted with that label.
However if the young cerement is hopeful, the time not wasted.
Wang at lib/ to try to gaze on the 5 young Ponsot and their paternal painter. 8920 172nd St
Jamaica 32, N. Y.
excuse for intrusion, you are looking for ms/ for EDGE, and want be sure a
review copy of her bk/ has been sent to Stock/
yu cd/ even do a paragraph on it, IF you can stand it.
thanks fer trying to contact Miss Tseng.
Of course if Graves was burried in a female german, he wd/ react nihilisti-
cally, and the slavs ARE savages and the limitations of the German Anschauung have been noted.
tho I doubt if John Dewey was competent to do so.
fergarzACHE dont think every name I send yu as subject of investigation is assumed to be source of LIGHT
KUANG KUANG MING MING etc.
no nacherly I have not read books ''ON'' by any of 'em. <Sandry or Sandri>
if the buggars cant katchee some FACT of use or interest, I prefer to git on with my own chop.
No interest in Frost, Sandbag [Sanburg] or even in Elvis the Pelvis. no objection to others having it.
Lee Lady: Lee Lady (b. 1939) visited EP in 1956-8. After taking degrees in mathematics and Greek, he earned a Ph. D. from New Mexico State University (1972). He was a math professor at University of Hawaii from 1977 to 2001.
Graves: Robert Ranke Graves (1895-1985), British poet, novelist, and critic.
Sharp: Bob Sharp. See Letter 146.
Miss Tseng: in a letter to EP of 2 May 1957 Wang reports: ''Mrs. Pao Swen Tseng has already
departed for Formosa, according to information supplied by the Chinese Delegation'' (Bei-
necke).
KUANG KUANG MING MING: the phrase from Wang Youpu's expansion of Kangxi's ''Sacred Edict''
means ''enlightened. '' It surfaces in Canto 99/722.
Elvis the Pelvis: American rock-and-roll icon Elvis Presley (1935-77)
from poetry to politics 191
157 Wang to EP (TLS-6; Beinecke)
4 Luglio [July 1957]
Caro Maestro [Dear Master],
Been busy working on article on modern chinese literature and translating
some poems for EDGE. Also doing a bit of work on the Edicts. Heard from Stock, who turned down my ''Mr. Universe'' poem. Read Stock's own poem in EDGE No. 4 and have a very low opinion of it. It leads me to wonder why so many inferior poets are magazine editors (e. g. Karl Shapiro, Stephen Spender, John Crowe Ransom and anthologists Sheldon Rodman, Rolfe Humphries, Oscar Williams among a host of other mediocrities).
Wonder if E. P. has ever seen an issue of POETRY TAOS. It combines cheesecake with poetry. W. C. Williams showed me a copy of it. Between covers of nude young ladies in technicolor there are sheaves of modern verse.
New York is not completely dead. There is at least one boy I know who's doing some honest work. Tom Sullivan, whom I mentioned in last letter, is hard at work on Brook[s] Adams and Zi[e]linski. He has written some insipid verse in the manner of Edgar Lee Masters, but his prose style is quite decent. His autobio- graphical sketches remind me vaguely of passages out of Portrait [of the Artist as a Young Man], but he cannot be just dismissed as an imitator of J[ames] J[oyce].
Nora was here. Told about Horton's anti-Kasper campaign. Hsin mistrusts all people with Xat heads and big jowls.
The Wrst four cantos of THE GRANDFATEHR CYCLE has [have] already come out in Romney's rag. With her usual woman's incompetence, she has allowed the printer to mutilate my poems abominably. As a result, a whole page of corrections has to be mimeographed. She is now staying at her beau's summer home in Jersey.
Marie Ponsot not heard from. It seems that after I had mentioned about my interest in eugenics, she decided not to see me. After all, the Catholic Church considers eugenics as sorcery.
Saw pore Ann[e] [Lebeck] last night. She insisted that women could be as intelligent as men if they so desired. She wanted to get a Ph. D. some day. Would like to write philosophical articles. Asked Hsin why E. P. has been partial to Marcella [Spann] and less fond of her. Hsin disagreed with her on all points. Adolf [Hitler] knew where women should belong more than any other political leaders. Told her that gloriWcation of the ''New Woman'' by merky thinkers like Ibsen and GBS [Shaw] has lead [led] to family disunity and political chaos in the West. Shaw as an antidote for Englishmen and westernized Chinese is excellent, but as a ''philosopher'' is all rot.
Literature is at a low ebb in Red China, but no lower than that in England. From Formosa all kinds of obscenities and viliWcations of Chinese Communist
[New York]
? ? ? 192 from poetry to politics
leaders have Xooded into this country. Chiang Kai-shek is certainly the last person on earth to encourage or inspire any national literature. Imagine Lucky Luciano or Frank Costello as the president of the United States and just see what kind of literature will Xourish.
Many verse-songs (? ? ) were written by Tu Fu and Po Chu-Yi. Some of them were inspired by the cruder songs of the Chinese people. I have translated two of them. ''I Joined the Army'' and ''The Song of the Boat-Puller of the Tyrant Yang'' are enclosed. Hope il maestro will read them over and give Hsin some criticism.
Po Chu-Yi, who used to tear up his verse whenever his washerwoman failed to understand and appreciate it, is now enjoying an unprecedented popularity in Red China. DeWnitely one of the top ten or Wfteen greatest Chinese poets, he is regarded by the Chinese Communist writers to be at least as great as Tu Fu and even greater than Li Po. As a narrative poet, he is comparable to Chaucer. Next to Tu Fu, he was the T'ang poet most interested in political matters. Since il maestro has translated Li Po, Tao Yuan-Ming, and Hsin's ancestor Wang Wei or Wang Fei (Omakitsu in Nipponese) and read some of Tu Fu, I think it is time that E. P. should take a look at Po, who resembles Tu Fu in many ways. His ? ? ? ''Song of Unending Sorrow'' about Yang Kuei-Fei and Emperor Ming Wang of the T'ang Dynasty is a masterpiece of Chinese narrative verse on a major scale.
Chao told me about E. P. 's recent discovery of Kuan Chung, the great Chinese economist. But Kung learned a good deal more from the Book of Changes (? ? ) and the Duke of Chou ? ? , one of my ancestors.
In the near poetic vacuum of the U. S. today, Hsin has found Elvis the Pelvis [Presley] a welcome relief from the constipations of Robert Frost, the diarrhea of Carl Sandbag, and the stinking shit of Shapiro, Schwartz, Rexroth, Tate and other buggers. Elvis at least makes one feel like fucking or busting the noses of some spineless poetic jerks like Richard Eberhart and W. H. Auden and murdering some Wlthy intellectual scumbags like Adlai Stevenson and/or Anthony Eden.
Believe that la Marcella has shown il maestro Hsin's ''The Message of Elvis Presley. '' Wonder where I can send it.
About Graal in Portugal, Hsin has never heard from him since writing him and sending mass. to him. Who is this person and what does he do in Portugal? Both Sharp and Hsin had the idea of starting a gym in Washington D. C. These are the facts: (1) as far as I know from checking through health and muscle magazines, there is no health studio in the district itself. The nearest gym is in Baltimore. There must be students at Catholic University and other youngsters who feel like going to a gym for weight-lifting, calisthenics, boxing, etc. Unless there is a serious problem about segregation, Washington should be a good place to start a gym. (2) In a gym you can sell books relating to mental and physical health and also health food. (3) Gyms used to be headquarters of the pre-war Bunds. Young people can get together to exchange ideas and practise target-shooting, which may come in
from poetry to politics 193
handy later in dealing with the Dulleses and Stevensons etc. (4) There are unsavory characters in bookstores as well as gymnasiums. But the future of real American manhood is more likely to be found swinging on parallel bars than slinking in bookstore corners behind bifocals. (5) If one such gym becomes successful in D. C. , a chain of similar gyms can be started all over the United States. In the long run, it will be more eVective than having bookstores. Does E. P. agree?
A candidate for running such a gym in Washington has been suggested by both Sharp and Nora. Les Blackaston, whom Hsin has not yet met, has been described as a junior version of Hemingway. What does E. P. think of him? Cheri [Sheri Martinelli] or Marcella [Spann] can be used as the trademark of the gym, and even Chatel can be put to selling health drinks behind a bar and eating all his can food there in perfect safety (without the interference of his landlady).
The blasted Wrecrackers outside make thinking impossible. Salute to D. P.
[signed] ?
Shapiro . . . Ransom: Karl Shapiro (1913-2000), editor of Poetry; Stephen Spender (1909-95), co-editor of Encounter; John Crowe Ransom (1888-1974), editor of Kenyon Review.
Rodman . . . Williams: Sheldon Rodman, ed. , Mortal Triumph and Poems (1932); Rolfe Humphries, ed. , New Poems (1953); Oscar Williams, ed. , Book of New Poems of 1943 (1943).
Tom Sullivan: David Wang refers to Tom Sullivan as a newcomer to New York and ''an admirer of il maestro'' (2 May 1957, Beinecke).
Brook[s] Adams: see Glossary on Adams, Brooks.
Zi[e]linski: Thaddeus Zielinski (1859-1944), Polish professor of Greek. Henry Swabey's translation
of his ''The Sybyl'' (Paris: Rieder, 1924) appeared in Edge, 2 (December 1956).
Nora: Nora Devereaux Lyden, a divorced mother with two sons, was brought to EP and his circle
by John Kasper.
Luciano . . . Costello: New York organized crime bosses Charles Luciano and Frank Costello. Eberhart: Richard Eberhart (1904-2005), professor and poet-in-residence at Dartmouth College,
1956-70.
Stevenson: Adlai Stevenson was Democratic presidential candidate in 1952 and 1956. Eden: Sir Anthony Eden (1897-1977), British prime minister (1955-7).
Graal: unidentiWed.
Elvis the Pelvis: see Letter 156 n.
Dulles: John Foster Dulles (1888-1959), US Secretary of State from 1953 to 1959. Sharp: Bob Sharp. See Letter 146.
Les Blackaston: unidentiWed.
Chatel: Jean Chatel, an aspiring novelist, later became a psychiatrist.
158 EP to Wang (TLS-1; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] 28 Sp/57
You wd/have got in with yr/godman/BUT it is unconfucian NOT to observe the Xight of time/
194 from poetry to politics
mebbe as the request to get on Sat/ didn't arrive till Monday they tho[ugh]t it not worth answer.
I had some suggestions.
still have 'em if yu get here.
K[asper]/ probably in ERROR mixing with ignorant / which is diVerent from
the crowd.
Guard against sedition. USE the law, even when the tyrants do not.
The theory of the law, the words of the law, until changed by constitutional
and legal process.
Note that Kerr and Ritchie are more astute.
CONSTITUTION PARTY
Ritchie combining with Peters who has vast amount of PARTICULAR
knowledge.
though stuck in his own generation.
Whether Maverick will open the other part of his mind, I dont know. he has
again been allowed to TEACH
which may be a bad sign, BUT he does go into detail and up to date has
answered question and LOOKED at texts.
HAS NOT yet grasped sense of stamp scrip/but may be demurring to Wnd
out if I know what the hell I am talking about. yrz
Kerr and Ritchie: Gordon Kerr, an instructor at Aberdeen University, informed EP of the success of his ''Pound campaign'' (15 June 1953, Beinecke).
Eleanor Ritchie at Berkeley described to EP admirers' discussions of his poems (6 November 1956, Beinecke).
? ? Maverick: see Letter 135 n. : see Letter 149 n.
? 159 EP to Wang (TLS-1)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] 11 Jan 58
Appeal to N. H. Pearson, 233 N. G. S. Yale Station, New Haven Conn. He has just had member of family in nervous breakdown/ so is distracted at moment.
So keep him in reserve until real danger of deportation/
IF deportable, INSIST on going to Formosa, not to Moscovite dependency say yu are OBviously not howling for white supremacy/and that study of
systematic defamation shd/ be made by some FOUNDATION. needs 200 researchers ENdowed.
from poetry to politics 195
IMPrimatur, and for greater etc. and copies not only to Stock
but to
Chas. Martell, 25 College St. Canton, N. Y.
Wm. Cookson, 5 Cranbourne Court, Albert Bridge Rd. London, s. w. 11 England Desmond O'Grady, 40 via Pisa, Roma, Italy
Vanni Scheiwiller, 6 via Melzi D'Eril, Milano, Italy. alzo L Dudek / Delta
1143 Sixth Av. Verdun, Montreal, Canada.
AND Sheri [Martinelli] wants a copy.
yrz [signed] E. P.
I shouldn't send anything ELSE with it to any of them. Goullart been heard from.
Martell: Charles Martell had short articles on EP published in The Laurentian of St Lawrence University, where he was a student till 1957.
Cookson: William Cookson (1939-2003) founded the Poundian journal Agenda and edited SP. See memorial issue of Agenda, 39/4 (Summer 2003).
O'Grady: Desmond O'Grady, a poet and a correspondent. In 1960 EP looked him up in Rome and stayed at his apartment for several days.
Vanni Scheiwiller: see Glossary on Scheiwiller, Vanni.
Dudek: Louis Dudek of McGill University corresponded with EP. CBC aired his ''Letters of Ezra
? Pound'' on 14 September 1957. Goullart: see Letter 165 n.
160 Wang to EP (TL-1; Beinecke)
Lemme know fer shoor if thou hast received the Chinese jacket. Sent it by parcel post with insurance (''swallow's comb'' in Chinese). ? ?
Yes, already sent copies to England, Italia, and Australia. Am really in deep trouble. Lost my job with the YMCA as a result of pressure from the ADL [Anti- Defamation League]. Accused of ''anti-Semitism'' mainly because of Rattray's article in the NATION and Ridgeway's article in the IVY MAGAZINE. If matters are not cleared up, may be forcibly sent back to RED China against my wishes. Pray that E. P. will at least help by calling Rattray a liar. See no other way out. Eagerly await E. P. 's instruction.
Will be with Doc Williams on Friday.
Do you have a spare copy of EDGE No. 8? Would like veerrrry much to have it.
Chinese jacket: in a letter to EP of 8 January 1958 Wang writes: ''Your Chinese jacket already made and sent from Hong Kong'' (Beinecke).
[New York] Jan. 14 [1958]
? 10
P. H. Fang and the Naxi Rites in The Cantos ''I have found your Muen Bpo & KA MA gyu''
Lijiang in remote southwest China has been a hot tourist attraction ever since its inclusion in the list of UNESCO's World Heritage sites (see Fig. 10. 1). Many have attributed this distinction to the legacy of the American botanist Joseph Rock (1884- 1962), including his monographs and books about the Naxi ethnic group inhabiting the Lijiang area. Some have also linked this honor to Forgotten Kingdom, a 1955 book by the Belarus-born traveler Peter Goullart. Few are aware of Pound's contri- bution to this glory. Among the beautiful lyrics of Pound's final cantos are those about the landscape of Lijiang and the strange culture of the Naxi.
Carroll Terrell and others are not wrong in identifying Rock's ''The Romance of 2K'a-2ma ? -1gyu-3mi-2gkyi,'' ''The 2Muan 1Bpo ? Ceremony,'' and The Ancient Na- khi Kingdom of Southwest China as sources of the Naxi (Na-khi) passages in Thrones and Drafts and Fragments (Terrell, 674, 713). But was Rock the first to introduce Pound to the Naxi? Rock and Pound exchanged letters for several years of which one from Rock to Pound (dated 3 January 1956) has been discovered. In it Rock refers to a Naxi native: ''My friend Pao-hsien Fang, a Na-khi boy whose parents I used to know for many years in Likiang, Yunnan, sent me a letter written by Prof. G. Giovannini of the Catholic University of America. In the letter Mr. Giovannini told Fang that he had given you two of my papers on the Na-khi . . . among whom I lived for 27 years'' (Beinecke).
P. H. Fang, the ''Na-khi boy,'' now a retired Boston College research professor, confirmed in a 2003 interview (see Fig. 10. 2) that he was a mutual friend of Rock and Pound and that in 1954 he loaned to Pound inscribed copies of ''The Romance of 2K'a-2ma ? -1gyu-3mi-2gkyi'' and ''The 2Muan 1Bpo ? Ceremony. '' Upon Pound's return to Italy, Fang obviously asked about these monographs, for in a letter to him of 15 July 1958 Pound wrote: ''I have found your Muen Bpo & KA MA gyu in my luggage. '' Also, on 5 August 1958, Pound wrote to Peter Goullart, asking how he could ''get copies of [Rock's] Na Khi stuff'': ''have had to send Fang's copies back to him'' (Beinecke). Pound had used Fang's copy of ''2K'a-2ma ? -1gyu- 3mi-2gkyi'' so frequently that by 1958 its soft cover was worn off and replaced by
p. h. fang and naxi rites in the cantos 197
a hard binder. Fang still keeps this copy with Pound's note in red ink: ''Sorry the binder has omitted Rock's dedication to Fang'' (see Fig. 10. 3). In a January 1959 card to Ezra and Dorothy Pound Fang acknowledged the return of this and the other Rock monograph: ''Thank you for these books you sent back and the beautiful binding with your precious signature'' (Letter 164).
What do we know about P. H. Fang? How did he get to know Pound? Born to a merchant family in Lijiang, Fang (Fang Baoxian ? ? ? , b. 1923) came to America via India in 1945. After taking a master's degree at Ohio State University (1950), he started to work on a Ph. D. in physics at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. There he met and married Josefine Maria Riss from Austria, who held a Ph. D. from the University of Graz and would soon start working toward a degree in library science. Among their friends was CUA Professor of English Giovanni Giovannini, who later became their firstborn Paula's godfather.
Early in 1953 Professor Giovannini took P. H. Fang to Pound at St Elizabeths Hospital. The American poet, Giovannini told Fang, had translated Li Bo's poems and Confucius' Analects. P. H. Fang was impressed. In the next five or more years he and Josephine (officially spelt that way in the US) visited Pound countless times. More than once or twice they took their daughter Paula and son David with them. On Pound's birthdays Josephine would make a kind of cake she knew Pound was fond of and it was usually Paula who would carry it to where the Pounds received their visitors. In a letter of 6 January 1959 Dorothy Pound wrote of one such visit: ''Paula may remember bringing EP his birthday cake at St. E's'' (Beinecke).
The Fangs' visits coincided with the moment Pound was trying to bring out an edition of the Confucian Odes with a Chinese seal text and a sound key. With a visitor from China, naturally he would talk endlessly about Confucius, Fenollosa, and Fenollosa's essay on ''The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry. '' One day, when Pound began quoting Fenollosa and marveling at the Chinese character again, P. H. Fang surprised Pound by remarking that the scholar-priests of his hometown still used primitive picto- graphs. This was the first time he told Pound that he was from Lijiang on the borders of Tibet. Lijiang was the center of the ancient Naxi kingdom, which flourished from the eighth to the eighteenth centuries. Its landscape, along with a unique culture, had fascinated Rock and Goullart. And it would soon surface in Pound's new cantos in Thrones and Drafts and Fragments:
at Li Chiang, the snow range,
a wide meadow (Canto 101/746)
By the temple pool, Lung Wang's
the clear discourse
as Jade stream (Canto 112/804)
198 p. h. fang and naxi rites in the cantos
The ''earthly paradise'' over Lijiang is real, Fang testifies. Starting from 1973 he has been returning to his hometown regularly. The ''snow range'' remains as majestic and serene as it has ever been; and so do ''the temple pool'' and the ''Jade stream'' (see Fig. 10. 1). Fang is too modest to consider his role as important, but his visits to St Elizabeths served to open Pound's eyes to a China not only beyond the Chinas of De Mailla and Legge but also beyond those of Carsun Chang and Achilles Fang, resulting in a new direction in the late cantos.
From that point on, whenever P. H. Fang showed up, Pound would ask him to draw a few Naxi pictographs and teach him how to pronounce them. Among the dozen or more Naxi pictographs Fang drew for Pound were those for the ''sun'' and the ''moon. '' In Canto 112 Pound reproduces two Naxi pictographs, one for ''fate's tray'' or, as Rock puts it, ''a large winnowing tray made of the small bamboo,'' embodying ''a fate, a life,'' and the other for the ''moon'' (see Canto 112/805). Although both pictographs occur in Rock's ''2K'a-2ma ? -1gyu-3mi-2gkyi'' and ''2Muan 1Bpo ? ,'' it is safe to assume that Pound had learned the Naxi sign for the moon first from P. H. Fang.
On those early visits to St Elizabeths, P. H. Fang spent no less time chatting with Pound about his people's strange ceremonies--2Muan 1Bpo ? (Sacrifice to Heaven) and 2Ndaw 1Bpo ? (Sacrifice to Earth). He must have prepared Pound for Rock's accounts of these Naxi rituals. 2Muan 1Bpo ? subsequently found its way into Canto 98 and 2Ndaw 1Bpo ? into Canto 112.
In late 1953, with a Ph. D. in hand Fang moved to Dresher (near Philadelphia) to take a job at Philco. In 1954 Rock paid Fang a visit on a trip to the East Coast from Hawaii, where he was a research professor. He had been a friend of Fang's parents. When in Lijiang during the 1920s and 1930s, the botanist had borrowed sums of local silver dollars from the elder Fang, which he had chosen to pay back in the early 1950s by sending checks of American dollars to P. H. Fang at the Catholic University. Before departure on his 1954 visit, Rock took out two of his monographs--''2K'a-2ma ? -1gyu- 3mi-2gkyi'' and ''2Muan 1Bpo ? ''--and inscribed them to P. H. Fang. Believing that these papers would answer most of Pound's queries about the Naxi script and rites, Fang sent them to St Elizabeths through Giovannini.
In early 1956 Fang moved back to DC to start on a research job at Catholic University. When he resumed his visits to St Elizabeths, Pound would keep him longer for his Naxi lessons. He would pick a word here and a word there from ''2K'a-2ma ? -1gyu-3mi-2gkyi'' or ''2Muan 1Bpo ? '' and ask P. H. Fang to pronounce them and explain their meanings. P. H. Fang's copy of ''2K'a-2ma ? -1gyu-3mi-2gkyi'' bears some of his glosses and corrections for Pound. On page 9, for instance, above the phonetic symbol ''1Yu-'' is the English word ''sheep'' in Fang's hand. From the Naxi pictograph for ''shepherd,'' a figure with a sheep's head, Pound could have guessed what ''1Yu-'' in Rock's ''1Yu-boy'' meant. P. H. Fang's gloss points to Pound's insistence on making certain what each part of a Naxi compound signified. In describing the pronunciation of the
p. h. fang and naxi rites in the cantos 199
Naxi word for ''cuckoo,'' Rock states that ''The word 3gkye-2bpu is the most difficult to pronounce. '' Next to this is given in Fang's hand ''eng geek.
''The Grandfather Cycle'': a long poem of 101 cantos of which Wang Wnished Wfteen. Its Wrst four cantos appeared in the June 1957 issue of Poetry Broadside. See the Wrst Wfteen cantos in The Human Voice, 2/1 (1966), 31-6.
Romney: Barbara Romney, editor of Poetry Broadside.
156 EP to Wang (TL-1; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] 3 May [1957]
No objection to Marcella's having ideas, fancy or otherwise
incline to favor ACTivity/ as anthropologist, instructive to observe activity/ inactivity / vide Mang Tze, less phenomenal, ergo less food provided the observer.
190 from poetry to politics
///
Not all things from one man/
of the FEW (damn) bits of sapience from U. S. pragmatik.
''not what you know but whom you know''/
murkns enslaved cause wont communicate with each other/
not necessary to use their intelligence if they have mobilizable $ and enough
intelligence to permit extraction or direction of same/
Lee Lady has rustled $20 for Edg/etc. the HOPE of appearing shd/be used as lure tho subscribers are not REQuired to contribute their own compositions. And Graves (funereal name) can't be expected to consider Sharp a poet who
suggested that S/ was being inserted with that label.
However if the young cerement is hopeful, the time not wasted.
Wang at lib/ to try to gaze on the 5 young Ponsot and their paternal painter. 8920 172nd St
Jamaica 32, N. Y.
excuse for intrusion, you are looking for ms/ for EDGE, and want be sure a
review copy of her bk/ has been sent to Stock/
yu cd/ even do a paragraph on it, IF you can stand it.
thanks fer trying to contact Miss Tseng.
Of course if Graves was burried in a female german, he wd/ react nihilisti-
cally, and the slavs ARE savages and the limitations of the German Anschauung have been noted.
tho I doubt if John Dewey was competent to do so.
fergarzACHE dont think every name I send yu as subject of investigation is assumed to be source of LIGHT
KUANG KUANG MING MING etc.
no nacherly I have not read books ''ON'' by any of 'em. <Sandry or Sandri>
if the buggars cant katchee some FACT of use or interest, I prefer to git on with my own chop.
No interest in Frost, Sandbag [Sanburg] or even in Elvis the Pelvis. no objection to others having it.
Lee Lady: Lee Lady (b. 1939) visited EP in 1956-8. After taking degrees in mathematics and Greek, he earned a Ph. D. from New Mexico State University (1972). He was a math professor at University of Hawaii from 1977 to 2001.
Graves: Robert Ranke Graves (1895-1985), British poet, novelist, and critic.
Sharp: Bob Sharp. See Letter 146.
Miss Tseng: in a letter to EP of 2 May 1957 Wang reports: ''Mrs. Pao Swen Tseng has already
departed for Formosa, according to information supplied by the Chinese Delegation'' (Bei-
necke).
KUANG KUANG MING MING: the phrase from Wang Youpu's expansion of Kangxi's ''Sacred Edict''
means ''enlightened. '' It surfaces in Canto 99/722.
Elvis the Pelvis: American rock-and-roll icon Elvis Presley (1935-77)
from poetry to politics 191
157 Wang to EP (TLS-6; Beinecke)
4 Luglio [July 1957]
Caro Maestro [Dear Master],
Been busy working on article on modern chinese literature and translating
some poems for EDGE. Also doing a bit of work on the Edicts. Heard from Stock, who turned down my ''Mr. Universe'' poem. Read Stock's own poem in EDGE No. 4 and have a very low opinion of it. It leads me to wonder why so many inferior poets are magazine editors (e. g. Karl Shapiro, Stephen Spender, John Crowe Ransom and anthologists Sheldon Rodman, Rolfe Humphries, Oscar Williams among a host of other mediocrities).
Wonder if E. P. has ever seen an issue of POETRY TAOS. It combines cheesecake with poetry. W. C. Williams showed me a copy of it. Between covers of nude young ladies in technicolor there are sheaves of modern verse.
New York is not completely dead. There is at least one boy I know who's doing some honest work. Tom Sullivan, whom I mentioned in last letter, is hard at work on Brook[s] Adams and Zi[e]linski. He has written some insipid verse in the manner of Edgar Lee Masters, but his prose style is quite decent. His autobio- graphical sketches remind me vaguely of passages out of Portrait [of the Artist as a Young Man], but he cannot be just dismissed as an imitator of J[ames] J[oyce].
Nora was here. Told about Horton's anti-Kasper campaign. Hsin mistrusts all people with Xat heads and big jowls.
The Wrst four cantos of THE GRANDFATEHR CYCLE has [have] already come out in Romney's rag. With her usual woman's incompetence, she has allowed the printer to mutilate my poems abominably. As a result, a whole page of corrections has to be mimeographed. She is now staying at her beau's summer home in Jersey.
Marie Ponsot not heard from. It seems that after I had mentioned about my interest in eugenics, she decided not to see me. After all, the Catholic Church considers eugenics as sorcery.
Saw pore Ann[e] [Lebeck] last night. She insisted that women could be as intelligent as men if they so desired. She wanted to get a Ph. D. some day. Would like to write philosophical articles. Asked Hsin why E. P. has been partial to Marcella [Spann] and less fond of her. Hsin disagreed with her on all points. Adolf [Hitler] knew where women should belong more than any other political leaders. Told her that gloriWcation of the ''New Woman'' by merky thinkers like Ibsen and GBS [Shaw] has lead [led] to family disunity and political chaos in the West. Shaw as an antidote for Englishmen and westernized Chinese is excellent, but as a ''philosopher'' is all rot.
Literature is at a low ebb in Red China, but no lower than that in England. From Formosa all kinds of obscenities and viliWcations of Chinese Communist
[New York]
? ? ? 192 from poetry to politics
leaders have Xooded into this country. Chiang Kai-shek is certainly the last person on earth to encourage or inspire any national literature. Imagine Lucky Luciano or Frank Costello as the president of the United States and just see what kind of literature will Xourish.
Many verse-songs (? ? ) were written by Tu Fu and Po Chu-Yi. Some of them were inspired by the cruder songs of the Chinese people. I have translated two of them. ''I Joined the Army'' and ''The Song of the Boat-Puller of the Tyrant Yang'' are enclosed. Hope il maestro will read them over and give Hsin some criticism.
Po Chu-Yi, who used to tear up his verse whenever his washerwoman failed to understand and appreciate it, is now enjoying an unprecedented popularity in Red China. DeWnitely one of the top ten or Wfteen greatest Chinese poets, he is regarded by the Chinese Communist writers to be at least as great as Tu Fu and even greater than Li Po. As a narrative poet, he is comparable to Chaucer. Next to Tu Fu, he was the T'ang poet most interested in political matters. Since il maestro has translated Li Po, Tao Yuan-Ming, and Hsin's ancestor Wang Wei or Wang Fei (Omakitsu in Nipponese) and read some of Tu Fu, I think it is time that E. P. should take a look at Po, who resembles Tu Fu in many ways. His ? ? ? ''Song of Unending Sorrow'' about Yang Kuei-Fei and Emperor Ming Wang of the T'ang Dynasty is a masterpiece of Chinese narrative verse on a major scale.
Chao told me about E. P. 's recent discovery of Kuan Chung, the great Chinese economist. But Kung learned a good deal more from the Book of Changes (? ? ) and the Duke of Chou ? ? , one of my ancestors.
In the near poetic vacuum of the U. S. today, Hsin has found Elvis the Pelvis [Presley] a welcome relief from the constipations of Robert Frost, the diarrhea of Carl Sandbag, and the stinking shit of Shapiro, Schwartz, Rexroth, Tate and other buggers. Elvis at least makes one feel like fucking or busting the noses of some spineless poetic jerks like Richard Eberhart and W. H. Auden and murdering some Wlthy intellectual scumbags like Adlai Stevenson and/or Anthony Eden.
Believe that la Marcella has shown il maestro Hsin's ''The Message of Elvis Presley. '' Wonder where I can send it.
About Graal in Portugal, Hsin has never heard from him since writing him and sending mass. to him. Who is this person and what does he do in Portugal? Both Sharp and Hsin had the idea of starting a gym in Washington D. C. These are the facts: (1) as far as I know from checking through health and muscle magazines, there is no health studio in the district itself. The nearest gym is in Baltimore. There must be students at Catholic University and other youngsters who feel like going to a gym for weight-lifting, calisthenics, boxing, etc. Unless there is a serious problem about segregation, Washington should be a good place to start a gym. (2) In a gym you can sell books relating to mental and physical health and also health food. (3) Gyms used to be headquarters of the pre-war Bunds. Young people can get together to exchange ideas and practise target-shooting, which may come in
from poetry to politics 193
handy later in dealing with the Dulleses and Stevensons etc. (4) There are unsavory characters in bookstores as well as gymnasiums. But the future of real American manhood is more likely to be found swinging on parallel bars than slinking in bookstore corners behind bifocals. (5) If one such gym becomes successful in D. C. , a chain of similar gyms can be started all over the United States. In the long run, it will be more eVective than having bookstores. Does E. P. agree?
A candidate for running such a gym in Washington has been suggested by both Sharp and Nora. Les Blackaston, whom Hsin has not yet met, has been described as a junior version of Hemingway. What does E. P. think of him? Cheri [Sheri Martinelli] or Marcella [Spann] can be used as the trademark of the gym, and even Chatel can be put to selling health drinks behind a bar and eating all his can food there in perfect safety (without the interference of his landlady).
The blasted Wrecrackers outside make thinking impossible. Salute to D. P.
[signed] ?
Shapiro . . . Ransom: Karl Shapiro (1913-2000), editor of Poetry; Stephen Spender (1909-95), co-editor of Encounter; John Crowe Ransom (1888-1974), editor of Kenyon Review.
Rodman . . . Williams: Sheldon Rodman, ed. , Mortal Triumph and Poems (1932); Rolfe Humphries, ed. , New Poems (1953); Oscar Williams, ed. , Book of New Poems of 1943 (1943).
Tom Sullivan: David Wang refers to Tom Sullivan as a newcomer to New York and ''an admirer of il maestro'' (2 May 1957, Beinecke).
Brook[s] Adams: see Glossary on Adams, Brooks.
Zi[e]linski: Thaddeus Zielinski (1859-1944), Polish professor of Greek. Henry Swabey's translation
of his ''The Sybyl'' (Paris: Rieder, 1924) appeared in Edge, 2 (December 1956).
Nora: Nora Devereaux Lyden, a divorced mother with two sons, was brought to EP and his circle
by John Kasper.
Luciano . . . Costello: New York organized crime bosses Charles Luciano and Frank Costello. Eberhart: Richard Eberhart (1904-2005), professor and poet-in-residence at Dartmouth College,
1956-70.
Stevenson: Adlai Stevenson was Democratic presidential candidate in 1952 and 1956. Eden: Sir Anthony Eden (1897-1977), British prime minister (1955-7).
Graal: unidentiWed.
Elvis the Pelvis: see Letter 156 n.
Dulles: John Foster Dulles (1888-1959), US Secretary of State from 1953 to 1959. Sharp: Bob Sharp. See Letter 146.
Les Blackaston: unidentiWed.
Chatel: Jean Chatel, an aspiring novelist, later became a psychiatrist.
158 EP to Wang (TLS-1; Beinecke)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] 28 Sp/57
You wd/have got in with yr/godman/BUT it is unconfucian NOT to observe the Xight of time/
194 from poetry to politics
mebbe as the request to get on Sat/ didn't arrive till Monday they tho[ugh]t it not worth answer.
I had some suggestions.
still have 'em if yu get here.
K[asper]/ probably in ERROR mixing with ignorant / which is diVerent from
the crowd.
Guard against sedition. USE the law, even when the tyrants do not.
The theory of the law, the words of the law, until changed by constitutional
and legal process.
Note that Kerr and Ritchie are more astute.
CONSTITUTION PARTY
Ritchie combining with Peters who has vast amount of PARTICULAR
knowledge.
though stuck in his own generation.
Whether Maverick will open the other part of his mind, I dont know. he has
again been allowed to TEACH
which may be a bad sign, BUT he does go into detail and up to date has
answered question and LOOKED at texts.
HAS NOT yet grasped sense of stamp scrip/but may be demurring to Wnd
out if I know what the hell I am talking about. yrz
Kerr and Ritchie: Gordon Kerr, an instructor at Aberdeen University, informed EP of the success of his ''Pound campaign'' (15 June 1953, Beinecke).
Eleanor Ritchie at Berkeley described to EP admirers' discussions of his poems (6 November 1956, Beinecke).
? ? Maverick: see Letter 135 n. : see Letter 149 n.
? 159 EP to Wang (TLS-1)
[St Elizabeths Hospital] [Washington, DC] 11 Jan 58
Appeal to N. H. Pearson, 233 N. G. S. Yale Station, New Haven Conn. He has just had member of family in nervous breakdown/ so is distracted at moment.
So keep him in reserve until real danger of deportation/
IF deportable, INSIST on going to Formosa, not to Moscovite dependency say yu are OBviously not howling for white supremacy/and that study of
systematic defamation shd/ be made by some FOUNDATION. needs 200 researchers ENdowed.
from poetry to politics 195
IMPrimatur, and for greater etc. and copies not only to Stock
but to
Chas. Martell, 25 College St. Canton, N. Y.
Wm. Cookson, 5 Cranbourne Court, Albert Bridge Rd. London, s. w. 11 England Desmond O'Grady, 40 via Pisa, Roma, Italy
Vanni Scheiwiller, 6 via Melzi D'Eril, Milano, Italy. alzo L Dudek / Delta
1143 Sixth Av. Verdun, Montreal, Canada.
AND Sheri [Martinelli] wants a copy.
yrz [signed] E. P.
I shouldn't send anything ELSE with it to any of them. Goullart been heard from.
Martell: Charles Martell had short articles on EP published in The Laurentian of St Lawrence University, where he was a student till 1957.
Cookson: William Cookson (1939-2003) founded the Poundian journal Agenda and edited SP. See memorial issue of Agenda, 39/4 (Summer 2003).
O'Grady: Desmond O'Grady, a poet and a correspondent. In 1960 EP looked him up in Rome and stayed at his apartment for several days.
Vanni Scheiwiller: see Glossary on Scheiwiller, Vanni.
Dudek: Louis Dudek of McGill University corresponded with EP. CBC aired his ''Letters of Ezra
? Pound'' on 14 September 1957. Goullart: see Letter 165 n.
160 Wang to EP (TL-1; Beinecke)
Lemme know fer shoor if thou hast received the Chinese jacket. Sent it by parcel post with insurance (''swallow's comb'' in Chinese). ? ?
Yes, already sent copies to England, Italia, and Australia. Am really in deep trouble. Lost my job with the YMCA as a result of pressure from the ADL [Anti- Defamation League]. Accused of ''anti-Semitism'' mainly because of Rattray's article in the NATION and Ridgeway's article in the IVY MAGAZINE. If matters are not cleared up, may be forcibly sent back to RED China against my wishes. Pray that E. P. will at least help by calling Rattray a liar. See no other way out. Eagerly await E. P. 's instruction.
Will be with Doc Williams on Friday.
Do you have a spare copy of EDGE No. 8? Would like veerrrry much to have it.
Chinese jacket: in a letter to EP of 8 January 1958 Wang writes: ''Your Chinese jacket already made and sent from Hong Kong'' (Beinecke).
[New York] Jan. 14 [1958]
? 10
P. H. Fang and the Naxi Rites in The Cantos ''I have found your Muen Bpo & KA MA gyu''
Lijiang in remote southwest China has been a hot tourist attraction ever since its inclusion in the list of UNESCO's World Heritage sites (see Fig. 10. 1). Many have attributed this distinction to the legacy of the American botanist Joseph Rock (1884- 1962), including his monographs and books about the Naxi ethnic group inhabiting the Lijiang area. Some have also linked this honor to Forgotten Kingdom, a 1955 book by the Belarus-born traveler Peter Goullart. Few are aware of Pound's contri- bution to this glory. Among the beautiful lyrics of Pound's final cantos are those about the landscape of Lijiang and the strange culture of the Naxi.
Carroll Terrell and others are not wrong in identifying Rock's ''The Romance of 2K'a-2ma ? -1gyu-3mi-2gkyi,'' ''The 2Muan 1Bpo ? Ceremony,'' and The Ancient Na- khi Kingdom of Southwest China as sources of the Naxi (Na-khi) passages in Thrones and Drafts and Fragments (Terrell, 674, 713). But was Rock the first to introduce Pound to the Naxi? Rock and Pound exchanged letters for several years of which one from Rock to Pound (dated 3 January 1956) has been discovered. In it Rock refers to a Naxi native: ''My friend Pao-hsien Fang, a Na-khi boy whose parents I used to know for many years in Likiang, Yunnan, sent me a letter written by Prof. G. Giovannini of the Catholic University of America. In the letter Mr. Giovannini told Fang that he had given you two of my papers on the Na-khi . . . among whom I lived for 27 years'' (Beinecke).
P. H. Fang, the ''Na-khi boy,'' now a retired Boston College research professor, confirmed in a 2003 interview (see Fig. 10. 2) that he was a mutual friend of Rock and Pound and that in 1954 he loaned to Pound inscribed copies of ''The Romance of 2K'a-2ma ? -1gyu-3mi-2gkyi'' and ''The 2Muan 1Bpo ? Ceremony. '' Upon Pound's return to Italy, Fang obviously asked about these monographs, for in a letter to him of 15 July 1958 Pound wrote: ''I have found your Muen Bpo & KA MA gyu in my luggage. '' Also, on 5 August 1958, Pound wrote to Peter Goullart, asking how he could ''get copies of [Rock's] Na Khi stuff'': ''have had to send Fang's copies back to him'' (Beinecke). Pound had used Fang's copy of ''2K'a-2ma ? -1gyu- 3mi-2gkyi'' so frequently that by 1958 its soft cover was worn off and replaced by
p. h. fang and naxi rites in the cantos 197
a hard binder. Fang still keeps this copy with Pound's note in red ink: ''Sorry the binder has omitted Rock's dedication to Fang'' (see Fig. 10. 3). In a January 1959 card to Ezra and Dorothy Pound Fang acknowledged the return of this and the other Rock monograph: ''Thank you for these books you sent back and the beautiful binding with your precious signature'' (Letter 164).
What do we know about P. H. Fang? How did he get to know Pound? Born to a merchant family in Lijiang, Fang (Fang Baoxian ? ? ? , b. 1923) came to America via India in 1945. After taking a master's degree at Ohio State University (1950), he started to work on a Ph. D. in physics at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. There he met and married Josefine Maria Riss from Austria, who held a Ph. D. from the University of Graz and would soon start working toward a degree in library science. Among their friends was CUA Professor of English Giovanni Giovannini, who later became their firstborn Paula's godfather.
Early in 1953 Professor Giovannini took P. H. Fang to Pound at St Elizabeths Hospital. The American poet, Giovannini told Fang, had translated Li Bo's poems and Confucius' Analects. P. H. Fang was impressed. In the next five or more years he and Josephine (officially spelt that way in the US) visited Pound countless times. More than once or twice they took their daughter Paula and son David with them. On Pound's birthdays Josephine would make a kind of cake she knew Pound was fond of and it was usually Paula who would carry it to where the Pounds received their visitors. In a letter of 6 January 1959 Dorothy Pound wrote of one such visit: ''Paula may remember bringing EP his birthday cake at St. E's'' (Beinecke).
The Fangs' visits coincided with the moment Pound was trying to bring out an edition of the Confucian Odes with a Chinese seal text and a sound key. With a visitor from China, naturally he would talk endlessly about Confucius, Fenollosa, and Fenollosa's essay on ''The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry. '' One day, when Pound began quoting Fenollosa and marveling at the Chinese character again, P. H. Fang surprised Pound by remarking that the scholar-priests of his hometown still used primitive picto- graphs. This was the first time he told Pound that he was from Lijiang on the borders of Tibet. Lijiang was the center of the ancient Naxi kingdom, which flourished from the eighth to the eighteenth centuries. Its landscape, along with a unique culture, had fascinated Rock and Goullart. And it would soon surface in Pound's new cantos in Thrones and Drafts and Fragments:
at Li Chiang, the snow range,
a wide meadow (Canto 101/746)
By the temple pool, Lung Wang's
the clear discourse
as Jade stream (Canto 112/804)
198 p. h. fang and naxi rites in the cantos
The ''earthly paradise'' over Lijiang is real, Fang testifies. Starting from 1973 he has been returning to his hometown regularly. The ''snow range'' remains as majestic and serene as it has ever been; and so do ''the temple pool'' and the ''Jade stream'' (see Fig. 10. 1). Fang is too modest to consider his role as important, but his visits to St Elizabeths served to open Pound's eyes to a China not only beyond the Chinas of De Mailla and Legge but also beyond those of Carsun Chang and Achilles Fang, resulting in a new direction in the late cantos.
From that point on, whenever P. H. Fang showed up, Pound would ask him to draw a few Naxi pictographs and teach him how to pronounce them. Among the dozen or more Naxi pictographs Fang drew for Pound were those for the ''sun'' and the ''moon. '' In Canto 112 Pound reproduces two Naxi pictographs, one for ''fate's tray'' or, as Rock puts it, ''a large winnowing tray made of the small bamboo,'' embodying ''a fate, a life,'' and the other for the ''moon'' (see Canto 112/805). Although both pictographs occur in Rock's ''2K'a-2ma ? -1gyu-3mi-2gkyi'' and ''2Muan 1Bpo ? ,'' it is safe to assume that Pound had learned the Naxi sign for the moon first from P. H. Fang.
On those early visits to St Elizabeths, P. H. Fang spent no less time chatting with Pound about his people's strange ceremonies--2Muan 1Bpo ? (Sacrifice to Heaven) and 2Ndaw 1Bpo ? (Sacrifice to Earth). He must have prepared Pound for Rock's accounts of these Naxi rituals. 2Muan 1Bpo ? subsequently found its way into Canto 98 and 2Ndaw 1Bpo ? into Canto 112.
In late 1953, with a Ph. D. in hand Fang moved to Dresher (near Philadelphia) to take a job at Philco. In 1954 Rock paid Fang a visit on a trip to the East Coast from Hawaii, where he was a research professor. He had been a friend of Fang's parents. When in Lijiang during the 1920s and 1930s, the botanist had borrowed sums of local silver dollars from the elder Fang, which he had chosen to pay back in the early 1950s by sending checks of American dollars to P. H. Fang at the Catholic University. Before departure on his 1954 visit, Rock took out two of his monographs--''2K'a-2ma ? -1gyu- 3mi-2gkyi'' and ''2Muan 1Bpo ? ''--and inscribed them to P. H. Fang. Believing that these papers would answer most of Pound's queries about the Naxi script and rites, Fang sent them to St Elizabeths through Giovannini.
In early 1956 Fang moved back to DC to start on a research job at Catholic University. When he resumed his visits to St Elizabeths, Pound would keep him longer for his Naxi lessons. He would pick a word here and a word there from ''2K'a-2ma ? -1gyu-3mi-2gkyi'' or ''2Muan 1Bpo ? '' and ask P. H. Fang to pronounce them and explain their meanings. P. H. Fang's copy of ''2K'a-2ma ? -1gyu-3mi-2gkyi'' bears some of his glosses and corrections for Pound. On page 9, for instance, above the phonetic symbol ''1Yu-'' is the English word ''sheep'' in Fang's hand. From the Naxi pictograph for ''shepherd,'' a figure with a sheep's head, Pound could have guessed what ''1Yu-'' in Rock's ''1Yu-boy'' meant. P. H. Fang's gloss points to Pound's insistence on making certain what each part of a Naxi compound signified. In describing the pronunciation of the
p. h. fang and naxi rites in the cantos 199
Naxi word for ''cuckoo,'' Rock states that ''The word 3gkye-2bpu is the most difficult to pronounce. '' Next to this is given in Fang's hand ''eng geek.
