apologies if this message appears twice.... email troubles at the ISP, and
some of my email incoming and outgoing has gone into the ether.

Bob Scheetz wrote:

> his paganism is stilted, effect....

I prefer to state this approximate truth in another way ;-)  Namely, that
Pound has begun a search for corroborating  expressions of the liminal
experience alluded to in The Tree, and a language with which to describe
that experience.  The poems in PERSONAE are the record of the poet's
embarking upon this exploration to find his sincere voice and a unifying
mythos. What Pound discovers is not one voice, nor one myth, but many voices
and multiple myths, each facet reflecting however the same "eternal states
of mind".

> the arrival of the lyrical

Yes, this experience does eventually take Pound to Cavalcanti. But the
subjects of the lyricism are psyche and knowing, archetype and the high
dream; it is not a simple unselfconscious lyricism.

> ...the heightened sense (wonderfull-ness) of the simple,
> unmediated, sensual moments

Here, I must differ rather strongly.  The poet's day is lit by a light the
quality of which he has never seen before.  The _experience_ alluded to in
The Tree is straight out of Ovid.  I don't mean merely that the language or
themes are cribbed from Ovid, but that  this is a new and strange mode of
awareness for the poet. He hasn't merely got himself a new attitude; his
senses now add up to more than 5. He has "stepped into the myth", stepped,
as in the Cocteau film, through the mirror into the underworld.

> he's not a poet of the grande narrative...myth, archetype, allegory

There are two assertions here. Grande narrative (as in cohesive sequential
story without narrative lacunae, that adheres to the rules of syntax so
firmly one could drive a bullet-train upon its rails) -- you've got a point
there. But NOT A POET OF MYTH, ARCHETYPE, ALLEGORY ?????

Perhaps you are thinking of Ezra Pound the monetary theorist?
Tim


----- Original Message -----
From: "bob scheetz" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, June 14, 2000 11:58 PM
Subject: Re: Pound myth and religion


> tim,
>     yer right,...pardon the lapse.
> clearly god like everything is always dual -
> apollonian/dionysian, jehovah/jesus.
>
> and its certainly a recognition-event poem,
> but as such it signals the arrival in the speaker
> of the lyrical, not religious, sensibility,
>  ...the heightened sense (wonderfull-ness) of the simple,
> unmediated, sensual momentsof the circumambient existential present.
> pure lyricism, haiku, embedded in longish stretches
> of rhetoric, is ep's poesis
> ...so i agree with carrol cox,  his paganism is stilted, effect....
> ...and that, finally, he's not a poet of the grande narrative (religion,
> myth, archetype, allegory,...)
>
>
>
> bob
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Tim Romano <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Wednesday, June 14, 2000 7:32 AM
> Subject: Re: Pound myth and religion
>
>
> > Bob,
> > One could certainly relate The Tree to Yeat's Leda and the Swan or
> > Veronica's Napkin, or to poems by Graves, or to films by Cocteau. Not
> > because of any influences, however, but simply because they're all about
> the
> > same kind of liminal experience.
> >
> > Eliot is "religious" in the western smitten-by-guilt augustinian
> tradition.
> > Pound was a pagan. How can we speak of the Anglican religion and the
> > religions of Bali? The word encompasses a wide range of practices and
> > beliefs.
> >
> > This is not a poem that celebrates the "carnal" but rather the
semi-divine
> > nature of humanity (the gods must be "_kindly_ entreated"); the
"elm-oak"
> > alludes to the halves of the soul, the other quotations I adduced will
> bear
> > this out.
> >
> > Tim
>
>