Truth Rings No Bells.

When Modernist Poetry, Or What Not So Long Ago Passed For Modernist Poetry, Can Reach The Stage Where The Following Piece By Mr. Ezra Pound Is Seriously Offered As A Poem, There Is Some Justification For The Plain Reader And Orthodox Critic Who Shrinks From Anything That May Be Labelled 'modernist' Either In Terms Of Condemnation Or Approbation. Better He Thinks, That Ten Authentic Poets Should Be Left For Posterity To Discover Than One Charlatan Should Be Allowed To Steal Into The Temple Of Fame.

The Terms 'male' And 'female' Must Be Understood As Representing No Mere Primitive Opposition Of Sex To Sex; But As Defining Two Worlds Of Differing Quality, In Either Of Which Men And Women May Jointly Move And Live.

How Our Story Has Been Divided Up Among The Truth-telling Professions! Religion, Philosophy, History, Poetry, Compete With Each Other For Our Ears; And Science Competes With All Together. And For Each We Have A Different Set Of Ears. But, Though We Hear Much, What We Are Told Is As Nothing: None Of It Gives Us Ourselves, Rather Each Story-kind Steals Us To Make Its Reality Of Us.

The Rhythmic Pattern Of The Poem, Which Forces Continuity Of Attention - Incites A Pleasurable Compulsion To 'follow' - Is Either A Tried Metrical Suasion-contrivance Or A Specially Invented Pattern Of Physical Insistences, Equally, If Not More, Binding In Its Effect On The Reader. From A Straight Linguistic Point Of View, There Is Room For Wonder If There Is Not Latent Vice In This Environment In Which Pleasurable Physically-compelled Responses, Produced By Incidents Of Poetic Utterance, Are Identified With The Good.

Women, Ever Since There Have Been Women, Have Had A Way Of Being People.