At 09:34 PM 06/05/01 -0400, Tim Romano wrote:
>I haven't made a study of Pound's manuscripts and don't know if the format
>on the pages in the New Directions edition that I have reveal authorial
>intent.

This is something that I have wondered about a lot.  I have
given some thought to how one might typeset the Cantos
digitally for paper and electronic presentation (I have some
expertise in this area) and there are a bunch of huge design
decisions to be taken, the most obvious being line breaks and
indentation, but there are others.

The maximally faithful way to go would be to preserve all
line breaks and arrange that each line start with the same
indentation relative to the preceding line that one observes
on the pages of the paper edition.  (Tricky, since one must
take the details of the font's character metrics into
account, but doable I think).  But is this maximally faithful
to EP's intent?

Is it possible to "make a study of Pound's manuscripts"?
And perhaps more crucially, is there any information, in
correspondence, or living memory, of the nature of his
instructions to the typesetters and editors?  Does the
canon of Poundiana contain anything worth reading in this
area?  Seems like a basic question of scholarship to me.

Speaking of the actual observed rhythm, I expect that too
many who hold forth on this point have experimented
insufficiently with reading the Cantos aloud - I can do
this only by bypassing the lines that include Han
characters (not to mention hieroglyphics), but within the
bounds of this limitation, they work awfully well out
loud.  Much better than the work of some otherwise
unimpeachable living poets such as Seth and Walcott.
The only English-language poet springing to mind who
consistently exceeds EP in the rhythmic exactitude and
natural syllabic flow would be, well, er, Dr. Seuss (yes,
I'm serious, at least on alternate weeks).

Cheers, Tim Bray