SOURCE: North, Michael. “Where Memory Faileth: Forgetfulness and a Poem Including History.” In Ezra Pound: The Legacy of Kulchur, edited by Marcel Smith and William A. Ulmer, pp. 145-65. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1988.

In the following essay, North notes the many instances where Pound's historical and factual memory seems to fail him, but believes that for him it was a tool he used in his attempts to define culture.

When Ezra Pound was returned to the United States in 1945, he declared, “I'd die for an idea all right, but to die for an idea I've forgotten is too much. Does anyone have the faintest idea what I said?” The statement is discomforting for a number of different reasons, not the least of which is the claim of poor memory by the poet who had just completed the Pisan Cantos. We know that memory loss was one symptom...