Michael Springate wrote:

> Those to whom sensibility is everything (and history not much more than an
> intellectually constructed nuisance), can usually appreciate Pound's
> translations and early poetry, but frequently claim the Cantos to be
> unintelligible (and hence, a poetic failure). It is frustrating, at times, to
> discuss Pound with people of this ilk, as they always want one to point out
> "the good parts" in the Cantos, missing the essential challenge of the piece as
> a whole. However, if one chooses to indulge, there are "good parts" to quote,
> and Pound's lyric voice does find register in the Cantos.

Well-said, but I don't think it holds water.  I am one of those awful
people who find gems scattered through the Cantos unequaled elsewhere in
the canon of poetics, and who feel that large parts of the Cantos are in
fact unintellegible rubbish.  I would really like to see through to "the
essential challenge of the piece as a whole" which is one reason I hang
out here, but so far haven't.  In part because I'm baffled at the
thousands of lines of
obscurantist-take-on-forgettable-bits-of-US-history that seem so
poetically vacuous - it would be nice if there were a framework on which
they were mounted that better exposed their virtues if any.  Please
enlighten us. -Tim