;->
P.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Richard Seddon" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, March 05, 2010 6:50 PM
Subject: Re: OT - Re: old man


> Dear List
>
> I have long had a theory that the old man is Yeats.  The young man reading
> to him is Pound. And, the cottage is Stone Cottage where Yeats and Pound
> spent a year reading together when Pound acted as Yeats' secretary.  The
> woman is Misses Welfare, their landlady, who also cooked and cleaned for
the
> two.
>
> With this reading of the major characters the poem becomes a critique of
the
> evolution of Yeats' poetry into Pound's.
>
> Cribbing from Humprey Carpenter's  "A Serious Character: The Life of Ezra
> Pound" page 221--Pound writing to Dorothy said "You really must have a
pair
> of thick boots, or shoes, and warm socks.  It is a drippy kind of place"
> The cottage was on the "edge of a heath with our back to the woods".  This
> last from a letter quoted by Carpenter that Pound wrote his father.
>
> Yeats and Pound had 4 rooms in the cottage
>
> The cottage was apparently a windy and wet affair with plenty of isolation
> in which Yeats wrote poetry by dictating to Pound.  While not recording
> Yeats' poetry Pound read to Yeats.
>
> The entire experience was part of Pound's belief that literary talent
could
> be passed from a master to a disciple.  The disciple owing talent and
> inspiration to the master but the fruits of the contact could and would be
> quite different from the Master's.
>
> Rick Seddon
> Portales, NM