american idol

To Whistler, American 

On the loan exhibit of his paintings at the Tate Gallery.

You also, our first great,
Had tried all ways;
Tested and pried and worked in many fashions,
And this much gives me heart to play the game.

Here is a part that's slight, and part gone wrong,
And much of little moment, and some few
Perfect as Dürer!

"In the Studio" and these two portraits, if I had my choice!
And then these sketches in the mood of Greece?

You had your searches, your uncertainties,
And this is good to know—for us, I mean,
Who bear the brunt of our America
And try to wrench her impulse into art.

You were not always sure, not always set
To hiding night or tuning "symphonies";
Had not one style from birth, but tried and pried
And stretched and tampered with the media.

You and Abe Lincoln from that mass of dolts
Show us there's chance at least of winning through.

--Ezra Pound

Comments

[Bunny Smedley]

Just when I start to think that parts of this poem are quite good, other parts start sounding mad ... which is, I guess, the Pound promise.

And is it just me or does this make you desperate to do all your next week's art writing as Pound pastiche?

Perhaps someone should set up a blog where the only admissable comments had to sound like the Cantos. Just a thought.

[JL]

I hesitated before posting the poem, as it doesn't really speak for me (not that stuff posted here needs to, just that I didn't want to confuse anyone), and because, yes, it's uneven and a little flaky. But I couldn't resist, as at the moment I'm given to seeing Whistler's influence everywhere.

And is it just me or does this make you desperate to do all your next week's art writing as Pound pastiche?

Good Lord! I'm barely able to write as a pastiche of myself at the moment.

Perhaps someone should set up a blog where the only admissable comments had to sound like the Cantos. Just a thought.

Should I consider your comment the first effort?

[Bunny Smedley]

Nothing in my comment was remotely as flaky as the sudden pairing of Whistler with, of all people, Abe Lincoln! ( Not that I consider this a particularly high claim for sanity ... just a safe one.)

[JL]

Didn't mean to imply there was anything flaky at all about your comment, sorry! I rather liked the Lincoln/Whistler link, though it certainly was unexpected. Along with the title, it gives a sense of how iconic Whistler was for Pound, the extraordinary level of importance he's placing on the painter as an exemplary American (emphasis that) artist. It also brings an echo (for me, at any rate) of Whitman on Lincoln, tying Pound's poem and its subject back into American poetry. He sort of ruins it with the "mass of dolts" line, but again, that's Pound, and it's in its own way a faithful echo of certain views of America, for what that's worth.

[Bunny Smedley]

But that's just Pound, isn't it?

Even as I singled out that Lincoln line, I couldn't quite work out whether its refulgent flakiness was brilliant, the absolute high point of the poem, or actually just a bit mad. With Pound, I guess one always ought to expect a bit of both. But yes, I sort of love that weird lurch from 'art' into 'life', the sudden glimpse of Pound's own little secular pantheon, actually even the casual yet heartfelt grumpiness of that 'mass of dolts' line. When one thinks of it, that's pretty high praise for Whistler, isn't it? And a way of rescuing Whistler from that dandy's reputation? And a pretty strong statement about what art can do?

Also, the re-use of 'tried' and 'pried' near the end is very good, sort of enacting Pound's ongoing attempt to get out what he wants to say about, I guess, trying to be an American making art outside America - maybe trying to make American art outside America. 'Mass of dolts' indeed! However one reads that, I bet any American who's lived for a while on this side of the Atlantic has had cause to say something of the kind, flaky or not ...

[JL]

To be brief:

When one thinks of it, that's pretty high praise for Whistler, isn't it?

Yes.

And a way of rescuing Whistler from that dandy's reputation?

Yes--and very important.

And a pretty strong statement about what art can do?

Yes--and that's what makes the poem.