“MAKE IT NEW:
1. TO PAINT THE THING AS I SEE IT.
2. BEAUTY
3. FREEDOM FROM DIDACTICISM …”
KASPER
How about you write me something for the bookstore opening, a few words re how you feel right now, the political situation et al…. OK? I’ll have it printed up big, hang it in the window—right there in the heart of Greenwich Village where the so-called intellectuals and stuck-up academics will have to read it … Ez’s voice from the grave! From the nuthouse, anyway.
(Hands EZRA paper)
EZRA
(Accepting paper, hesitating)
Brain’s wore out these days.
KASPER
Just write the way you talk, Pops! Put your heart in it! Don’t hold back! Those fools in New York City need to hear the truth—YOUR truth!
(Gives EZRA pen)
Come on, Pops! MAKE IT NEW!
EZRA
Use my manifesto—
(Hands KASPER an old, yellowed paper)
KASPER
That won’t do it, Pops! That was, when?
EZRA (Stopping)
1908. I wrote it for H.D., Hilda Doolittle of Pennsylvania as was—booming her first poems—I got her published, she never would have amounted to anything if I hadn’t …
KASPER (Interrupting)
This ain’t about poetry, Pops, this is about the Mission! Cleansing the Anglo-Saxon race of befouling elements—Nigs, Yids and the rest of the gutter trash. Write that, Pops! That’ll light them up, all those Greenwich Village left-wing pinkos.
(As EZRA still hesitates)
You got some of your Rome broadcasts somewhere?
EZRA
Believe I do.
(He begins to scrabble through papers, KASPER assisting.)
What about this—
(Reading)
“FEAR GOD AND THE STUPIDITY OF THE POPULACE.”
KASPER
Not exactly what I—
EZRA
It’ll have to do, Kasper.
(Signs paper with a flourish, hands it over.)
What you aiming to serve at your vernissage?
KASPER
(Taking the paper, clearly disappointed)
Cheese and crackers.
EZRA
Waall … at Natalie Barney’s salon in Paris it was foie gras and champagne.
(Looking through KASPER’s bags)
You brung me anything else?
KASPER (Brightening)
Apples.
(He brings out two.)
EZRA
(Taking one)
Good to get the bowels a-moving, I guess.
(They sit on the bed. KASPER takes out a pocketknife, begins to peel an apple for EZRA.)
KASPER
Great rally in Louisville last week—you saw the papers?
EZRA
I don’t read the Jew press.
KASPER
Police claimed only five hundred in the crowd, my people counted over a thousand. Right on the courthouse steps; police everywhere but they couldn’t stop them.
(Hands EZRA apple slice)
Tennessee’s next—I’m starting a newspaper there: “The Clinton-Knox County Stars and Bars. A Nationalist-Attack Newspaper Serving East Tennessee.”
EZRA (Eating)
You giving ’em hell?
KASPER
You know it! Told those folks in Louisville I had it on good authority some Nigs have tails.
EZRA
(Laughing, mouth full of apple)
They get it?
KASPER
You bet they got it! You’re spraying me, Pops.
(Wipes himself off)
Supreme Court’s trying to force them to bus the kids, integrate their schools. They don’t want it, busted all the windows of that goddamned pinko rag they call a newspaper! Some of ’em went to jail. Speaking of jail …
(Hands EZRA another apple slice)
I hear they brought that girl of yours to trial.
EZRA
I don’t want to talk about it.
KASPER
Well, the story is all over town—“Pound’s student, drug charges”—didn’t you see it?
EZRA
I told you I don’t read Hymie lies. Undercover cops PLANTED that junk on her—trying to get at me!
KASPER
Don’t fool yourself. She’s got herself a habit, Pops. I know it. You know it.
EZRA
(Starts singing to drown out KASPER)
“Gentle Jheezus sleek and wild
Found disciples tall an’ hairy
Flirting with his red hot Mary
Now hot momma Magdalene
is doing front page fer the screen
Mit der yittischer Charleston Pband
Mit
deryiddischescharles tonband.”
(Ignoring this)
Got to write Possum. He sent word he didn’t want me ’sociating with your kind …
(He is looking for letter paper.)
KASPER
I’ve got to be going, catch the five o’clock back to the city. Got an important engagement.
(He begins to pack up his things.)
EZRA
You coming Sunday? Dorothy’s planning on serving cucumber sandwiches. Very British.
KASPER
If I can get away. “HONOR—PRIDE—FIGHT: SAVE THE WHITE!”
EZRA
Bravo, Kasp!
(Gives the fascist salute, which KASPER returns. KASPER exits. A pause. EZRA writes his letter, muttering to himself. Enter Marcella Spann, carrying briefcase. She hesitates near the door.)
MARCELLA
Professor Pound?
EZRA
(Looking up)
Who’s lookin’ for him?
MARCELLA
(Holding out her hand)
Marcella Spann. I wrote for permission …
EZRA
What you want from the old man?
(He approaches, shakes her hand, scrutinizes her.)
MARCELLA
(Taking papers out of her briefcase)
I teach high school English. We’re going to study Eliot’s The Wasteland next week. I was hoping perhaps you could—if it’s not too great an inconvenience—
EZRA
I midwifed that thing, performed a caesarean.
(He looks at cover of book she is holding.)
Old Possum’s gotten downright distinguished-looking. Three-piece suit! Scraggly and none too sweet-smelling, when I knew him. Sit down.
(He offers her the chair.)
Are you planning to teach the enfants the whole thing? How old—?
MARCELLA
Eleventh graders. Most of them are sixteen. It’s a small private day school—they’re quite amazingly literate. I was planning to start with a few of Eliot’s shorter works—
EZRA
Don’t coddle them, jump right in with the big stuff.
(Finding a page in the book, reading)
“For Ezra Pound: il miglior fabbro.”
You know the meaning of that?
MARCELLA (Translating)
“The better craftsman.”
EZRA
Exacto! Possum brought me this gosh-darned mess of papers—never seen anything like it—no shape to it, I told him, “This thing is going to be stillborn.”
MARCELLA
Stillborn? Whatever do you mean …
EZRA
Deformed in the womb! Went at it night and day, took out an arm and a leg. Then I had to get the thing delivered—find him a publisher, raise enough money for him to quit the bank—and he turned the money down, hurt pride, some such nonsense. But I got the poem published.
(He begins to read from “The Burial of the Dead” from The Wasteland.)
EZRA
“Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And t
he dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is a shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”
(Pause)
Too long getting to the end, I shoulda taken my hacksaw to them middle lines …
(He begins to scratch out lines in the book.)
MARCELLA
Oh, please—
(She takes the book.)
I have to teach from this. Now, if you would be willing to explain …
EZRA
Always at the service of a pretty gurl.
MARCELLA
(Ignoring this)
For example …
(Consulting the book)
What do you take to be the meaning of “the red rock”?
EZRA
Wrong way to go about it. When you start out to read a poem, you got to go about it like a biologist: slice to the heart of the writer’s method, examine it under a microscope! Now, Possum uses two types of metaphor: his wholly unrealizable, always apt, half-ironic suggestion, and his precise realizable picture. Which of these two types of metaphor is “the red rock”?
MARCELLA
The precise realizable—
EZRA (Excited)
Perfecto! And that’s only the start! Those three words convey a whole situation! It’s his constant aliveness, his mingling of a very subtle observation with the unexpectedness of a backhanded cliché—the red rock; what’s special about a red rock? Nothing. But you see, he’s taking it, turning it, linking its shadow to another shadow—
MARCELLA
“Your shadow at evening rising to meet you.”
EZRA
Yes, yes!
MARCELLA
But then he disconnects, jumps to this marvelous image:
“I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”
(Pause)
EZRA
It’s always dangerous to single out devices. A poet has to create his own metaphors, draw them from another source. Possum uses contemporary detail the way Velázquez—you know his work?
MARCELLA
Mr. Pound, I’d heard that you give quite a lecture, but I didn’t realize you gave it to all your—callers. Is it possible, do you think, for us to have a conversation?
EZRA
Later, later—don’t want to lose my train of thought, happens too easily these days! You remember the cold gray-green tones in Velázquez’s painting Las Meninas?
MARCELLA
Gray-green, yes—I remember those tones—but cold? Isn’t that in the eye of the beholder?
EZRA
Yes, yes of course—you’re starting to get it now! Show the kids that painting! A reproduction, anyway. Make them SEE the connection.
MARCELLA
And when they complain about this “old stuff”—
EZRA
Tell ’em the one big truth! The supreme test of a book—any book—is this: we should feel some unusual intelligence working behind the words. Ask ’em if their comic books, their junk—whatever they’re reading—ask if they find an unusual intelligence behind it.
MARCELLA
They’re all about emotion, at that age.
EZRA
There’s no intelligence without emotion. Next you’re going to have to educate them about vers libre—Eliot claims there’s no vers libre for a man who wants to do a good job. Close to the mark, but not on the button!
(DOROTHY enters, looks at MARCELLA. MARCELLA sees her, stands up. EZRA is oblivious.)
In fact Old Possum is one of the very few who have given a personal rhythm, an identifiable quality of sound to free verse. Music, you know—that’s the essential link. I HUM what I write …
(He is looking through books.)
Billy Yeats, now—he WROTE in that heavy Irish lilt, I’d hear him at night—we shared a cottage in Sussex, years ago, Dorothy was supposed to cook …
(Reading from a book, exaggerated Irish accent)
“Swear by what the sages spoke
Round the Mareotic Lake …”
Nothing to Jimmy Joyce, though—Yeats give me one of his first poems, I got it here somewhere.
(Finding book, reading, again, in an exaggerated Irish accent)
“I hear an army charging …”
What we lost—who we lost—you ever think of it? In these wars … for an old bitch gone in the teeth—a botched civilization.
MARCELLA
(Going to DOROTHY, shaking hands)
You must be Mrs. Pound.
DOROTHY
Who are you?
EZRA
Morning, Mao. This here young lady’s a schoolteacher, trying to knock some sense about poetry into a bunch of blockheads.
MARCELLA
(To DOROTHY)
I’ve taken up enough of Professor Pound’s time …
(She begins to gather up her things.)
EZRA
No, no—we’re just beginning!
MARCELLA
I don’t mean to intrude.
EZRA
No intrusion! This is the Ez-uversity. Dorothy always offers the students tea. Did you bring us anything special today, Mao—those chocolate cookies like you brought last week?
DOROTHY
(Beginning to lay out tea things. This is an elaborate ritual: porcelain cups, teapot, spirit lamp, strainer, etc.)
Lemon wafers, this time.
MARCELLA
Mrs. Pound, really—
DOROTHY
Go on with the lesson.
(As MARCELLA still hesitates)
I’m used to it, my dear! In fact—if I may say so—you are a good deal more—appropriate—than some of Ezra’s … students.
MARCELLA
Thank you.
(She sits down.)
EZRA
Now, as I was saying about Jimmy Joyce—
MARCELLA
I don’t teach Joyce, Professor Pound. I’m afraid his work would cause a reaction. Among the parents, that is.
EZRA
Set the cat among the pigeons—the whole purpose of serious literature!
MARCELLA
Probably! But for me—there are certain constraints…. Now, if you would be kind enough to elucidate …
(She looks through The Wasteland.)
What exactly is the source of the German quotation?
EZRA
(Snatching the book)
It’s from Tristan and Isolde—Possum always a great one for forun tongues—don’t believe he can speak a one of them, though…. Then we get to the heart of it:
“‘You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
They called me the hyacinth girl.’”
(He and DOROTHY exchange glances.)
MARCELLA
And the hyacinth girl was … ? I don’t want to be literal, but the girls are sure to ask.
EZRA
“She” was a “he”—Brit infantryman, killed in the First War. I made Old Possum cut out all the other smarmy stuff about him.
DOROTHY
Very wise, too.
EZRA
Keep close guard over the personal, it blurs things.
DOROTHY
A cup of tea, Miss—
MARCELLA
Spann. Marcella Spann. Thank you.
(Accepting cup)
DOROTHY
A lemon wafer?
MARCELLA
(Taking one)
You’re very kind.
(To EZRA)
But surely—the personal reference can shed some light.
EZRA
Wrong sort of light. A searchlight—not the fire flickering from Eleusis. Give it up, Marcella.
DOROTHY
<
br /> Here’s yours, Mao. Two lumps of sugar, two tablespoons of heavy cream.
(Hands him teacup)
EZRA
No chocolate cookies, though.
(He sips tea. Noise of patients in the hall grows louder.)
MARCELLA
It must be very difficult for you to concentrate on your work here …
DOROTHY
(Before EZRA can respond)
Dr. Overholser finally agrees there’s no reason for you to continue to be confined here. There’ll have to be a hearing, of course.
MARCELLA
After twelve years … what wonderful news.
DOROTHY
More than twelve years. The horror of it. My husband is one of the great men of his time.
EZRA
Now Mao, don’ you go mekking me blush.
DOROTHY
(To MARCELLA)
You seem an intelligent young woman. Perhaps you can understand. A situation such as this one, for the foremost poet in the English language—
EZRA (Clearly pleased)
Turn off the trumpets, Dorothy!
MARCELLA
I have felt from the beginning, Mrs. Pound, that this was a gross miscarriage of justice. And your fortitude, standing by him all these years …
DOROTHY
I’m Ezra’s “Committee”—in charge of everything. The court plans to make his release depend upon my role continuing—in perpetuity.
(EZRA groans.)
Don’t groan, Mao, it’s for your own good; you always had your theories but when it came to the actual handling of money …
EZRA (Determined)
Mao …
(Pause)
MARCELLA
You must be delighted.
(DOROTHY assents.)
Will you return to Italy?
DOROTHY
I believe so. Yes. But there are certain hurdles to overcome, first—
EZRA
Prime one bein’ I DON’ WANNA GO!
(To MARCELLA)
Nowhere to lay my head, outside this place.
DOROTHY
Mary has always said she’ll take you in at Brunnenburg … you’ll see your grandchildren.
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