A few weeks back, I ran across a piece of my writing from a few decades ago that was so horrendous I felt I dared not share it with you. And when I told you that, I asked that you remember what Ezra Pound had said.

Found a poem I wrote 20+ years ago about Clarion. Man, was I pretentious! I _won't_ be sharing it with you. Remember what Ezra Pound said.

— Scott Edelman (@scottedelman) June 7, 2013

I figured I should share the exact quote—but when I went looking, I couldn’t find it. And neither could my friends who know more about Pound than I ever will. Which meant the only way to track down the quote was to dig out my diaries and find the page on which I had copied it over in my own hand from a book I’d found while visiting a friend in Eugene, Oregon. (I was staying with him because we’d attended Clarion together and I was going to head over to Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm’s house in the same city to take part in one of their famous workshops.)

Anyway, I’ve now finally found the time to locate the right diary—I’ve been keeping up with it since 1978 and so had a LOT of volumes to go through—and learned exactly why none of us could find that Pound quote, even with all the power of the Internet at our disposal.

(more…)