Longenbach on Ezra Pound

Professor Longenbach's lecture "Pound at Home: The Crawfordsville State of Mind" filled in some blank spots in my knowledge of Ezra Pound's brief tenure at Wabash. While I knew the story of the "lady-gent impersonator," Longenbach's rendition opened my mind and paved the way for an interesting, and at times humorous, lecture/discussion of Pound. It was interesting to read from "Three Cantos II," knowing that it takes place in our very own Crawfordsville. The story of Fred Vance, in the poem, is intriguing because, before I read it, I had been under the impression that Pound did not like Crawfordsville (which he really DIDN'T) and had no friends here. Moreover, the poem draws connections between Vance and Pound: in Pound's eyes, both he and Vance were "noble" failures, and both lived in a place they didn't choose (Crawfordsville), dreaming—not living—their respective "Renaissances." What I found most interesting about the lecture was that Pound associated the "Crawfordsville state of mind" with good writing; it was only when he was in that "miserable" state of mind that he could suffer enough to write something of any value, and Pound could only get into such a state while he was in Crawfordsville, London, or Paris. Venice, for example, offered him no misery and, thus, nothing about which to write. Lastly, I was also interested in Pound's maxim "make it new" and the fact that he used language in a way that made common translations fresh and exciting (Old English in "Canto I," from a Latin translation of a Greek translation). I wonder if we lose much when we read it in modern English; this was one aspect that Longenbach did not discuss, and I only JUST realized that it would have been a good place for elaboration/elucidation.