Returning somewhat late to a thread I think I started, I want to
acknowledge the contributions by Moody, Davis,Cox and others and return to
the discussion.
        The passage I had in mind is the one cited by Garrick Davis, and I
see that I should have said that Pound did not consider "major form" a
necessity, insteadof saying, as I did, that he did not believe in it.
The "scheme" in the letter to his father, based on the fresco in the
Palazzoo Schifanoia in Ferrara is, as far as I can see, not
visible in the
Cantos as a whole, and was ultimately abandoned. But it does appear within
the individual Cantos, especially  the first 30, where the three planes of
existence are often intermingled.
        As for the parallel with the Divine Comedy, that would seem to put
the Pisan Cantos somewhere in the position of Paradiso.My feeling is that
while Pound started with  some idea of a grand structure, perhaps several
such ideas, history overtook him, in such forms as the Adams and Chinese
Cantos, and especially in the DTC, nullifying original intentions --
which, however, also included, quite inconsistently, that of poem from
which nothing could be excluded.
        Garrick Davis' citation does not appear to be quoted from memory.
It's not in ABC of Reading, and it should be found somewhere, since it
does exist, and the context, as Moody suggests, my offer illumination. The
ABC does mention Major Form, as Pound says he has no intention of writing
a novel and says he would not attempt "a treatise on major form in the
novel." (P. 89). Whether this means the topic is too forbidding or that it
does not exist is, I suppose, anybody's guess.
        Professor Moody's point that the poet or the reader become the
center of modern epics is illuminating, but I don't feel that this amounts
to major form. As for the reader, if I can be forgiven for going dove sta
memoria, vague as that may be, one critic has speculated that Pound's
enigmatic juxtapositions are invitations to the reader to participate in
the poem by supplying his own links. If this sounds Bartheian, so be it.
Pound's mind worked associatively, and he seems to ask the reader to think
in the same way when he says in Guide to Kulchur (p.75) that his
discussions of Gaudier, the Great Bass, Leibniz, and  Erigena form a
single ideogram, and are not separate subjects.
        As for trying to impose a single structure on the Cantos, I would
agree that that threatens to be a sterile exercise. There are certainly
separated passages that resonate wonderfully with each other. I think
there is something to be said for reading it as a kind of intellectual
journal, hearing an individual voice  testifying to its changing
experiences and its changing outlook on things.
        And I hope someone will come up with the source of Garrick Davis'
quotation
                                                Jacob Korg