>From: [log in to unmask]
>Reply-To: - Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine
>    <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: The Incoherence of the Cantos
>Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 20:38:20 EST
>
>Dear Pound Listmembers,
>
>I would like to hear some discussion on the lasting importance of the
>Cantos.
>Is it the great epic poem of the 20th century or a complete mess?
>
>It seems to me that, in the end, it is the great garbage heap of
>Modernism--a
>vast accumulation of (now annotated) passages from which the reader (or,
>more
>probably, the scholar) picks at random. It has a vast reputation among
>scholars and poets--and yet it is formless and incoherent by any standard.
>Its reputation (and example) has been pernicious. The Cantos is
>"responsible"
>for the other unreadable long poems of the Modernist era--like Olson's
>Maximus or Merrill's The Changing Light at Sandover.
>
>It is, in short, the perfect example of the excesses of Modernism and the
>taste in poetry that it championed: nasty, obscure, fragmentary, and long.
>
>If I may be permitted to quote myself:
>"Considered as an epic poem, as a unified work of art, the Cantos is a
>failure according to any critical measure we wish to use. It is so obscure
>that a small army of scholars has gained tenure by annotating its lines,
>and
>that enterprise has taken fifty years. It is so fragmentary that, even with
>their notes, most of it seems willfully private in the worst way: like the
>diary of an encryptionist, written for an audience of one. Without such
>notes, of course, the poem is merely a terrifying, polylingual puzzle. It,
>in
>fact, depends upon the glosses of scholars to render it readable; it is
>inscrutable without exegesis.  The Cantos is simply not a self-sufficient
>work of art."
>
>This question seems to be exemplified in the whole problem of addressing
>the
>Cantos in the singular or plural form. The Cantos is or the Cantos are? Is
>it
>one thing or a miscellany?
>
>Regards,
>Garrick Davis
>editor,
>CPR (www.cprw.com)


"Pay no attention to the criticism of a man who has never himself produced a
great work." .... EP

(or something to that effect.... we're working from memory here)

as to reading ... or Writing ... poetry professionally:

the only value poetry retains (which most of the other arts have lost)
is to be found in its utter and absolute economic uselessness

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