CONFERENCE
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 EZRA POUND INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

Kislak Center, University of Pennsylvania, June 2017

FOREWORD

by Mary de Rachewiltz

To keep it short, en deux mots: Beautiful poster of the Four Poets.

Marianne M. and WCW I visited in Brooklyn Rutherford, ALIVE. HD's tomb in Bethlehem thanks to Emily Wallace, idem "the Cat Head,” i.e. Homer Pound's mother in Philadelphia North Cemetary (her daughter married a Foot); Isabel's mother, Mary Weston in Hopkington cemetery. TCP's monumental grave in Chippewa  Falls.

Also the Rudge Grandfather and various tombs in Youngstown, Ohio. I visited them all. Ancestors from both sides not only buried but born in USA. The two O'Connell girls: Olga's mother sung in Brooklyn and N.Y. before leaving with her 3 children permanently for Europe; her aunt, Mrs. Harold Baynes O'Connell, naturalist and photographer died in Wyncote.

Homer and Isabel are buried in Italy. "Familial relics": books (Weston and Loomis) and paintings: the William Page portrait of Mary Parker and the Wadsworth "Coat of arms," the Hanna How embroidery and some silver spoons, "Americana" in the "grandfather trunk” that must have traveled across the Continent, treasured in Brunnenburg. Deep roots in America, a single, final "sprig" in Italy, with son and daughter and 4 grandsons.

It's a sense of decency plus age that prevents me from accepting the invitation to Philadelphia and in my head the hammering of EP's words: "Not necessary to move. Begin where you are. Pass on the tradition. Honesty of mind." And during the last ten years, his random notes: " The displaced/ must seek/ root space/ & the lucky grow/ where they are” (transcribed by O.R.)

I am deeply grateful to the friends who would have offered hospitality and transport to me and my family, and who have visited and participated in the 2015 EPIC.  I hope they'll understand and forgive.  The "inventor "of The Pound Era wrote The Elsewhere Community for the 2000 Millennium.

The parchment of Ezra Weston Pound - Magistri in Artibus is displayed in our "Pound Room" and I intended to bring it as an offering to the University of Pennsylvania Library, hoping that after a century, the time had come to bestow the honorary PHD denied in 1920 to Ezra Pound, Poet and Seer.

"There is no end of things in the heart"

The family joins me in sending greetings and all good wishes, MdeR.

Walter Baumann. Photo gallery of the conference.