Close to Greatness
Close to Greatness - context Summary
About Pound at St. Elizabeths
Bukowski recounts hearing two self-proclaimed visitors of Ezra Pound during his St. Elizabeths confinement: a man who claimed a visit and a woman who claimed intimacy and textual mention. He presents their conflicting stories, expresses skepticism about both the claims and the tendency for adventurous associations to proliferate around famous figures, and notes the tragic absurdity of Pound’s institutionalized years as wasted "madhouse time."
Read Complete AnalysesAt one stage in my life I met a man who claimed to have visited Pound at St. Elizabeth's. Then I met a woman who not only claimed to have visited E.P. but also to have made love to him. She even showed me certain sections in the Cantos where Ezra was supposed to have mentioned her. So there was this man and this woman, and the woman told me that Pound had never mentioned a visit from this man, and the man claimed that the lady had had nothing to do with the master, that she was a charlatan and since I wasn't a Poundian scholar I didn't know who to believe, but one thing I do know: when a man is living many claim relationships that are hardly so and after he dies, well, then it's everybody's party. My guess is that Pound knew neither the lady or the gentleman or if he knew one or if he knew both it was a shameful waste of madhouse time.
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