Eric Wagner, ready for action when he was a bit younger (Facebook photo).
Modern Occultist has just published a new interview with Eric Wagner, I thought it was pretty substantial. The interview is by C.M. Kushins, Here is one of the questions and answers:
MO: You document Wilson’s lifelong devotion to Ezra Pound’s Cantos—the phrase “hilaritas et amor” from the Paradiso section even became Wilson’s email signature. Yet Pound is a deeply problematic figure—which both you and Wilson acknowledged. How did Wilson square that particular tension, and how do you square it as someone who has spent decades in both men’s work?
EW: Bob did a very good job of separating the dancer from the dance, as Yeats put it. He would learn from people despite their more problematical aspects, as one can see from his discussions of Pound and Crowley, etc. I started reading Pound in 1982, and I would to read a bunch of Pound, become disgusted, and leave him alone for a while. Then I would read a bit of Pound, go “Wow!”, learn a lot, read a bunch more by and about Pound, get disgusted, and leave him alone for a while. As with Crowley, Pound has influenced me very profoundly, more so than with Crowley. I have also had the good fortune to teach number of Pound’s books in high school and community college classes.
In the 1990’s Bob invited me to participate in a discussion of Pound online at the Zero City Amphitheater. In our discussions there Bob compared me to St. Paul because he found me too judgmental of Uncle Ezra.
More here. There's been other items of interest in Modern Occultist News, which I'll cover in a follow-up blog post.
The biography of Mr. Kushins is interesting: "C. M. Kushins is the author of Nothing’s Bad Luck: The Lives of Warren Zevon (2019), Beast: John Bonham and the Rise of Led Zeppelin (2021), and Cooler Than Cool: The Life and Work of Elmore Leonard (2025). He has been a freelance journalist for over twenty years and his work has appeared in High Times and The Daily Beast, among others. His love of esoteric history began with both Tibetan and Zen Buddhism, as well as Western Hermeticism, which he lectured on in Berlin."
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