Alec Marsh

John Kasper and Ezra Pound.

Saving the Republic. London: Bloomsbury, 2015.

John Kasper was a militant far-right activist who first came to prominence with his violent campaigns against desegregation in the Civil Rights era. Ezra Pound was the seminal figure in Anglo-American modernist literature and one of the most important poets of the 20th century. This is the first book to comprehensively explore the extensive correspondence - lasting over a decade and numbering hundreds of letters - between the two men.

John Kasper and Ezra Pound examines the mutual influence the two men exerted on each other in Pound's later life: how John Kasper developed from a devotee of Pound's poetry to an active right-wing agitator; how Pound's own ideas about race and American politics developed in his discussions with Kasper and how this informed his later poetry. Shedding a disturbing new light on Ezra Pound's committed engagement with extreme right-wing politics in Civil Rights-era America, this is an essential read for students of 20th-century literature.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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 Campaign

10. 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

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