I pretty much never agree with the folks at Scarriet. Their kneejerk hatred of modernism and all its fruits (fruit of the poisoned tree?) runs right in the face of both my appreciation for modernism (especially high modernism) and for what I perceive to be sort of iconoclasm for the sake of iconoclasm (though in the guise of defending ‘true’ poetry – as a sort of dernière garde against the ravaging evils of modernism, post-modernism, L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E, etc).
This particular posting, is more than normally riling (which is, I suppose the point).
Leaving aside such items as the introduction of Wallace Stevens to the poetry reading public being considered, apparently, a bad thing (item number 7) and also bashing a young poet’s first book as being the final nail in the coffin of all that was bright and beautiful in poetry (item number 10), I would like to draw your attention to number 3 in the list.
3. The Waste Land, 1922
Publishing scheme launched by Pound & Eliot’s crafty lawyer and Golden Dawn/Aleister Crowley associate & British Intelligence agent, John Quinn.
Yes, that’s right. It is never said outright, but the author is clearly trying to suggest that the publication of The Waste Land was not, in fact, the result of someone recognizing the work as an important poem.
No, it’s actually a Satanic plot (‘scheme’) by foreign spies.
Sweet mother of god, people! Really?
And don’t try to deny it. No one in their right could see the referencing of the supposed ‘scheme’ (plot? conspiracy?) of this ‘crafty’ occultist spy as being anything other than a bit of paranoid conspiracy mongering.
Ugh.
the coffee philosopher 