I agree with your comments on Garrick's level of engagement with what he
criticizes. But I think you are simply substituting "profundity" for "coherence" in
your critique. It seems obvious that finding more profundity in Frost or early
Williams is a function of the current state of the reader unless accompanied by a
detailed comparison. Others experience may certainly and validly be apposed or
tangential to this ubiquitous response to "profundity" or "coherence." Also,
notions of "coherence" and "profundity" don't respond well to hierarchies. And
there are other hierachies for profundity. My uncles find Andy Rooney "profound"
and Oakeshott "incoherent."

And sometimes some of us find that history is just so much clutter. Carlo Parcelli

Daniel Pearlman wrote:

> I for one am glad to hear a voice like Garrick's that questions
> fundamental literary values and suggests that we reassess
> our evaluation of the Cantos (and, perhaps, the reasons that
> a number of us become Pound-beguiled, unable to look at
> his work objectively).  I, too, would like us to stop pretending
> that "disjunction, disunity, lack of coherence and totality" are
> literary qualities to be championed.  The thing is, I don't have
> a problem with Cantos unity, coherence, etc.  I've seen it
> and I've expounded upon it, and if Garrick were actually to
> READ some of the critics of the poem--including my own
> BARB--he'd have a hard time defending his bravura dismissal
> of the work.  Instead, Garrick seems to rely too heavily for
> his breezy dismissal on listing a bunch of major literary critics
> throughout the century who have equally dismissed the Cantos
> (also, with little more reading effort than Garrick appears to
> have put into the job), and he does not seem to realize that
> much of the reason for the critical dismissal of the Cantos
> over the years stems not only from the work's difficulty but
> also from Pound's totalitarian and anti-semitic value system.
> (We on this list have wrestled with these issues on and off
> over the last several years, and many of us have been quite
> objective about the potentially damaging effects of the ideas
> on the art.)  I myself, to reiterate, do not have a problem
> defending the unity of the Cantos; rather, as I think more
> and more about what Pound has to say to us (above and
> beyond all that annoying political froth of his), I find that I
> cannot defend anything that remotely could be identified
> as a sophisticated, profound view of the world that the
> poem was intended to critique.  Such profundity and
> sophistication I find, to the surprising contrary, in the
> considerable body of the work of Robert Frost (Pound's almost
> complete opposite), and, to a somewhat lesser extent, in
> the earlier work of Pound's friend  W.C. Williams.  In my
> dubiousness about the depth of Pound's thinking, I suppose
> I am merely echoing his friend Wyndham Lewis, who
> expressed it all as early as 1927.
> ==Dan Pearlman
>
> At 01:35 PM 12/20/2001 -0500, you wrote:
> >Dear Listmembers,
> >
> >Thanks to Messrs. Gancie, Davis, and Pealrman for their responses.
> >
> >Many wondered whether I was being "willfully provocative" or "playing the
> >devil" when I suggested that the Cantos are a junk heap--littered with pearls
> >of course--so let me discomfort them by affirming that I am perfectly serious.
> >
> >This judgment of the Cantos--it should be added--was one shared by Yeats,
> >Randall Jarrell, R.P. Blackmur, and Allen Tate. In fact, it is an
> >illuminating experience to read Tate's opinion change drastically over
> >time---compare "Ezra Pound" to "Ezra Pound and the Bollingen Prize" (both are
> >contained in Essays of Four Decades).
> >
> >In fact, the opinion I "provocatively" expressed has been the stated opinion
> >of many great critics of the 20th century. I find it disheartening, but
> >perfectly understandable, that the Pound List would not entertain this
> >opinion (except dismissively and in passing) but it shall not be dispelled so
> >easily.
> >
> >What is most interesting is not that the members of this List have difficulty
> >admitting that the Cantos are "nasty, obscure, fragmentary, and long" (this
> >is a self-evident fact) but that justification of " the poetics" of the
> >Cantos should finally, and fatally, involve embracing the virtues of (to
> >paraphrase Alex Davis' response): disjunction, disunity, lack of closure, and
> >lack of totality. Aren't these qualities the very hallmarks of the failed
> >work of art?
> >
> >If we (as Tim Bray has) entertain the idea that the Cantos are a miscellany,
> >and not "a unified work of art" then we explain many problems that have
> >bedeviled Modernism for three quarters of a century. The Cantos are a mess
> >because Pound had no epic plan in mind when he started, NOT because he wished
> >to be "ahead of his time" and champion "disjunction, disunity, lack of
> >coherence and totality" as avant-garde aesthetic values. Talk of it being an
> >epic poem simply dissipates, as it should. The Cantos become not one thing,
> >but many things---whereas an epic poem is a unified work of art--and so talk
> >of the Cantos fragments into various sections (Confucian, Adams, Pisan,
> >Throne sections, ad infinitum). These values have--need it be said?--polluted
> >Modernist and post-Modernist poetry to its great detriment and left the
> >reader with more unreadable poetry (Olson, Duncan, et al. than any one
> >century ought to produce.
> >
> >The Cantos have no one "poetic theory" but many--and I have suggested (in an
> >upcoming essay) that the Cantos would have suffered less had it simply been
> >titled the Later Poetry of Ezra Pound. The Cantos are a collection of
> >disparate poems, without any doubt. "It" will not and does not cohere as one
> >thing the author admitted (either  as "a unified work of art" or "an epic
> >poem"). Isn't it time that we treated the Cantos as a miscellany? And stopped
> >talking of "disjunction, disunity, lack of coherence and totality" as
> >literary qualities to be championed (alas, because we wished to defend the
> >Cantos) rather than the very absence of those qualities which characterize
> >the superior work of art?
> >
> >I shall finish by twisting a phrase by Robert Gorham Davis to my purposes:
> >"The Cantos are, finally, a litmus test for a whole range of critical values
> >(and for the excesses of Modernist taste) and stand self-condemned."
> >
> >Regards,
> >Garrick Davis
> >editor,
> >CPR
> >(www.cprw.com)
>
> Dan Pearlman's home page:
> http://pages.zdnet.com/danpearl/danpearlman/
>
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