Odds & Ends

There Are Always "Odds" & Never Any "Ends"

1st Odd: Via languagehat (via wood s lot) on our pal Ez:

THE STARTLE REFLEX.

Anyone interested in Ezra Pound should read Jonathan Morse's depressing but enlightening essay The Startle Reflex: Some Episodes from the Lives of Ezra Pound’s Language (from Jacket 34, October 2007). He starts off with a visit by Louis Zukofsky to Pound in St. Elizabeth's (the Washington loony bin into which Pound was placed after WWII in lieu of execution for treason) and Pound's report on it to a correspondent, and plunges into the morass of Pound's crazed notions about Jews: "But the word ‘Jew’ was a preemptive significance. It filled the cell of Pound’s mind with horror and silenced the echo of the violin."

This is from languagehat's post of December 6.

www.languagehat.com

2nd Odd: Pearl Harbor Day went by without even a nod of current event attention (remember Current Events when you were school kid?). Most of anybody alive back in those Roooseveltian days (or should we use Ez's pronunciation of Roosevelt? Poor old Ez--did you read that stuff about him in that languagehat link?) are dead today, though tourists watching the still-leaking oil and air bubbles still coming up from the USS Arizona monument over the sunken battleship is still a popular amusement when in Honolulu--standing there looking down on that sunken-ship on which over 1,000 young sailors and airmen lost their lives on that "day of infamy" that is slowly fading out of our culture's memory--our neo-nuclear culture--the new fear now is the third use of a nuclear bomb to annihilate a city--the first two uses of nuclear bombs was of course courtesy the Good Ole USA's annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki back in '45--(When? Ohhh, that's so ancient! Who cares about what happened back then?). You see, that's so long ago our generations have forgotten what happens when a nuclear bomb is dropped on your hometown. There aren't many Hiroshimans and Nagasakians left to dramatize the story.

A nuclear bomb dropped on your hometown first comes on you as a brilliant flash, and as this flash moves out from Ground Zero, it sets everything in its path on fire (it causes a firestorm); then comes the explosion--and what the firestorm didn't get, this megaexplosion will take care of--it'll rattle down what remains of buildings and will tear to shreds any human beings "lucky" enough to have survived the firestorm (firestorms by the way can reach out 11 miles from Ground Zero)--the explosion is like a 1000-mile-an-hour hurricane hitting you full-force; and then, if that ain't enough, comes the nuclear fallout--the nuclear rain--AND, if you survive that three-pronged devastation then you are more than likely a cockroach.

We recall hearing one time of advocates of our eating cockroaches; these true believers believed las cucarachas were a superprotein food that would give us the same survival powers as that hearty pest. Cockroach Eaters of America! Eat cockroaches not innocent cows! and pigs! and little lambs! and chickens! and ducks! and geese! and squabs! and venison! and rattlesnake! and goats! BUT OH NO, not a roach! Disgusting. Pigs live in their own shit--but who the hell's gonna push away a choice centercut pork chop stuffed with apples and then glazed in honey?--whoooo boy--and pass us some'a that Mexican cornbread overhere, too, while you're at it.

And it's funny we should start trumpeting the eating of pork after a scathing look at old Ez's weird anti-semitism. Some people we know believed they should have strung old Ez up by the neck 'till he was dead back there when the US Army had him penned up in that chicken coop in Italy. Now, all of that shit no longer matters and Ez left us with a huge bag of truly intelligence thinking, reasoning, and writing--Ez was either loved or hated all through his life--I think it was his Amurican-snob attitude--there is nothing worse than an Amurican intellectual like Ez--Gertrude Stein hated Ez because he sat in one of his [a Freudian slip not in Latin](her) prize antique chairs and broke it--THUS, Ez was forbidden to ever enter Gertie's premises ever again. She said Ez was too crude and common to enjoy her salons and self-gratifications. "Ye old hoary Lezzie," old Ez might have retorted--though Ez was probably (according to Hemingway) high on opium at the time. And women loved old Ez; Olga Rudge went through the roller-coaster ride of love with Ez--and she stayed with it in spite of its jerking her around and shakin' up her stomach ulcers and stayed with this crusty old bastard 'till the end. Ironically, Ez drove Hilda Doolittle into the arms of a woman (Lesbianism) who she stayed with the rest of her life. "H.D.? She were'a Lezz-bee-in anyway," would sez Ez.

Remember Pearl Harbor!

thestaff
for The Daily Growler

We Give Condolences to thewomantrumpetplayer on the Passing of Her Father--Here's thegrowlingwolf's Pappy's Day Post From June '07:

http://the-daily-growler.blogspot.com/2007/06/fathers-day.html