I also admire Hugh Kenner's early book.  He established an important method
of approach for Pound's poetry -- look at the prose.  It still works, but we
have more prose to look at than Hugh did in 1949.

Cheers,

Tim Redman

-----Original Message-----
From: - Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of A. David Moody
Sent: Sunday, January 26, 2003 12:21 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Kenner's "Poetry of Ezra Pound"


Carrol Cox wrote that this was "an unrevised and unexpanded printing of
Kenner's doctoral dissertation". Not so.  His 1950 Yale doctoral
dissertation became <Dublin's Joyce> (1956).

In "Retrospect: 1985", written as preface to the Bison Books Edition (U. of
Nebraska Press), Kenner said: "<The Poetry of Ezra Pound> was written in six
weeks, July-August 1949, by a graduate student ostensibly vacationing
between academic years directed toward other work."

He also wrote: "The scholarship of dedicated people on five continents has
obsolesced it in almost every particular."  He did not mention his own
<Pound Era> (1971), the work which above all the rest rendered it obsolete.

But in the1950s there was nothing that came anything near it as an attempt
to see <The Cantos> steadily and to see them whole.  It was a brilliant,
dazzling, exhilarating improvisation.  ("Lousy" is definitely not the word
for it.)

David Moody