Christopher Hitchens on Auden.

Though I shuddered to read him call Pound’s writings as ‘the sinister gibberish on the page.’

2 thoughts on “Hitchens & Poetry

  1. I guess you are entitled to dislike Pound’s poetry and disagree with him on many topics. But calling him a “pseudo-intellectual” just backfires on your own intellectual status. Coming from Hitchens it is hardly surprising though.

  2. I won’t necessarily argue with the pseudo intellectual, just because his political and philosophical ideas, tainted, as they were, with fascism and anti-semitism, were so poor. But his work editing and helping writers like Eliot and Hemingway surely earn him the title of intellectual. Nonetheless, I will give Hitchens his due and credit ‘pseudo-intellectual’ as a bit of hyperbole and meant to stand in for ‘bad’ or ‘wrongheaded intellectual.’

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