Garrick,
I'm hardly going to take the time to present a summary of my entire
book on the Cantos to help straighten you out.  My suggestion is
a guide for your further enlightenment' in other words, do the homework
required rather than taking the easy way out and dismissing
everyone's responses with cheap ad hominem smears.
==DP


At 06:31 PM 12/21/2001 -0500, you wrote:
>Dear Pound Listmembers,
>
>Thirty-odd responses after my initial letter ("Incoherence of the Cantos"), I
>would again request considered, thoughtful responses to my questions--since I
>have yet to receive any.
>
>The name-calling, so-called "flaming" mail, and curses are not what I find
>upsetting--writers have always attracted their fair share of cranks, and
>Pound has always attracted more than most--but the chopped logic, sloppy
>definitions, and inadequate proofs of the supposedly reasoned and "critical"
>letters I received are truly disheartening. What troubles me is the number of
>members on this list who seem wholly unfamiliar with the rudiments of logic
>and intelligent debate. Never have I encountered so many questions begged, so
>many assertions substituted for proof, so many denials supplied instead of
>demonstration.
>
>I do appreciate Messrs. Pearlman, Davis, Parcelli, Bray, and Springate for
>their attempts--but their responses seemed extremely fragmentary, obscure and
>short--in short, attempts. I also found a number of their positions
>untenable.
>
>For example, Mr. Parcelli writes: "I just came back from having dinner with
>the Modernist critique, Brad Haas. During the course of the meal I related
>your email concerning the lack of self-sufficiency in much of Pound; in
>essence that the Cantos do not achieve aesthetic homeostasis. Of course,
>questions of self-sufficiency depend more on the reader/critic/scholar than
>on the writer. A poet may write to generate response, but that response is
>only sustained if there is something there to sustain it. However, this is a
>too large and amorphous subject for an email."
>
>The reader will note that Mr. Parcelli's critical vocabulary is slippery:
>that is, it changes without notification. Thus, aesthetic homeostasis (Mr.
>Gancie's gloss of my "formal incoherence" of the Cantos) becomes
>"self-sufficiency" in the second sentence. Self-sufficiency, we are then
>told, is up to us (the reader) and not the writer. Followed closely, this
>would seem to indicate that readers are responsible for the homeostasis or
>form of the poem---which is, of course, nonsense. Mr. Parcelli probably means
>(or intended to mean) that readers are responsible for the interpretation of
>the poem--a questionable assertion as well--but then I'm guessing. I wish
>merely to note that his critical response has itself resisted form and
>definition, and remained incoherent.
>
>As an example of incomplete analysis, Mr. Bray offered: "While no easy
>theme-soundbite manifests itself, I certainly find that the Cantos read well
>from end-to-end, unlike most collections of poetry where one wanders and
>grazes.  I take this as empirical evidence that there is a unity operating at
>some level here." Mr. Bray does not, however, provide a suggestion as to what
>that unifying principle could be. Mr. Bray seems, therefore, convinced by
>evidence which does not exist or which he cannot formulate--and that is
>dubious proof, to be sure.
>
>Finally, Mr. Pearlman asserted: "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..."
>
>The reader will note that though Mr. Pearlman assures us that he has "seen
>and expounded" on the unity of the Cantos time and again, and can therefore
>vouch for their presence, he provides us with no analysis or exposition of
>their coherence. He merely asserts what I asked him to argue and prove. Mr.
>Pearlman then suggests that my reading "of the critics of the poem"  has been
>not only insufficient but non-existent. Had I actually READ these critics, he
>suggests, I could not dismiss the Cantos. This manages to be condescending
>without being helpful--for Mr. Pearlman nowhere provides a list of these
>critics who should be read for my further enlightenment.  Since the only
>critics I mentioned in my letter were Yeats, Blackmur, Jarrell, and Tate--and
>they did in fact find the Cantos a general mess--then I conclude that Mr.
>Pearlman has either not read them or misunderstood the basis of their
>judgment---for none of them condemned the Cantos for its "totalitarian and
>anti-semitic" values. Mr. Pearlman's letter, in other words, demonstrates no
>one else's air of "breezy dismissal" but his own. Coming from a literature
>professor (I believe) in Rhode Island, this is astonishingly bad as literary
>criticism.and I suggest Mr. Pearlman look to the deficiencies in his own
>reading before suggesting deficiencies in mine.
>
>Finally, I have received a few offline emails from Pound listmembers, the
>past few days, which condemn the general quality of this list's postings--and
>I don't disagree. One silent observer wrote, "I find the list riddled with
>misspellings, inaccuracies, and lazy writing. Are these the people husbanding
>Pound for us? My goodness." The great gift I believe a devotion to Ezra Pound
>should bestow on his admirers is a considerable care for words.
>
>Regards,
>Garrick Davis
>editor
>Contemporary Poetry Review
>(www.cprw.com)

Dan Pearlman's home page:
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