In order to be ready for next class, I ask that you do the following:
1) Read a specific letter found in this report, written for the Attorney general of the United States. You want the one dated 14 October 1942, and the entire document is over 600 pages long. No, you don't have to read it all!
2) Go through the Pisan Cantos, and consult both Pound in Purgatory and the biography (which you have), as well as the other biographies that are on reserve in library. Ask yourself how accurate the information contained in the letter mentioned above might be?
3) Biographies are supposedly a statement of fact about the person that they discuss, but it will not take you very long to discover that the various Pound biographers seem to be very much at odds with each other in terms of how they deal with Pound's anti-semitism. Who is right? How much does a given writer's appreciation of Pound's poetry allow him or her to overlook the (egregious, and undeniable) racial biases that the poet has?