The National Potrait Gallery has a new exhibit – Poetic Likeness: Modern American Poets.
The show’s title is, I hope, self-explanatory. If it is not, I suspect you are just on this blog in the hopes of finding dirty pictures (there aren’t any, so quit looking; the entire rest of the internet exists solely to store pornography, so you’ll live if you encounter a single freaking page without any nudity).
But a nice way to honor great American poets while providing a different way to look them and (hopefully) an opportunity to encounter their work.
I’m not so enamored of him as I once was (though I still enjoy his work), but when I was in college, I used to head over to the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts and look at the Rothko on their wall (along with a Hopper and Marsden Hartley, it was among my favorite pieces there).
So, happy birthday, my friend.
The role of artists and intellectuals in political resistance is a well documented and generally well respected modern and contemporary feature, but their role in actual governance has been littered with failure and ignorance.
Up until fairly recently, art and intellectuals were primary supported by (or actually part of, by way of birth) the governing class, which placed them in a different role vis a vis politics.
But at least since the Romantic period, certainly artists and also, to a great extent, I think, intellectuals have been put into a role as outsiders.
This is all about Ezra Pound and what to do with him. Because that question never goes away, does it?
I was reading this article about Pound’s relationship with Mussolini and the impression is that Pound was roundly duped by Il Duce.
Listen to this comment by Mussolini’s aide:
Pound as a stupid little man, tossed meaningless sops to keep him happy with being effectively ignored so he could be blithely trotted out as a meagre tool of propaganda when time permitted.
The great genius… reduced to so little.
the coffee philosopher 