John Kasper and Ezra Pound

Alec Marsh is Professor of English at Muhlenberg College, Pennsylvania, USA. He is the author of Ezra Pound (2011), and Money & Modernity: Pound, Williams and the Spirit of Jefferson (1998).

Author of an eponymous biography of Pound (2011) and Money and Modernity (CH, Mar'99, 36-3789)—the latter the best book available on Pound’s economic ideas—Marsh (Muhlenberg College) here demonstrates that John Kasper (an anti-Semitic admirer of Hitler and a segregationist), who has been dismissed by most Pound biographers as a right-wing nut who misunderstood Pound’s work, was actually an astute reader of Pound and worked hard to put Pound’s ideas into political action. Kasper, whose letters to Pound run to 400 pages, was jailed several times for inciting violent opposition to school integration in the 1950s. Pound’s anti-Semitism is well known, but the multiculturalism of his Cantos has obscured the intensity of the racism he learned from Louis Agassiz—a racism focused on the dangers of racial ‘amalgamation’ and the resultant ‘decay’ of racial purity. Marsh shows that Pound endorsed Kasper’s activities and agreed that the civil rights struggle was part of a Jewish/communist conspiracy that had infiltrated the US government. Marsh has made an important addition to Pound scholarship. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

• Introduction: Invitation to a KKK Rally 1. Kasper's Mission 2. The Impact of Agassiz 3. The "Make It New" Bookstore 4. From McCarthy to Brown 5. The Thomas Hart Benton Award, John Randolph and States' Rights: Cantos 88 and 89 6. Kasper Moves to Georgetown 7. The Alabama Campaign 8. Crommelin, Del Valle and Canto 105: A "Divigation" 9. Summer 1956: The Seaboard White Citizen's Council, Virginians on Guard! and the Charlottesville Campaign10. Kasper in Clinton and Nashville 11. Splinter Parties 12. Pound and Kasper Exposed 13. Pound Released 14. Pound's Legacy on the Right Bibliography Index