Hold on, I'm just going to cut n paste a bit of one of my essays, as I think
the influence of byron is a little underrated on pound.  -snip-

The Cantos were begun with a specific Romantic in mind (as well as
Browning); at the time he was writing the ur-Cantos Pound was also writing
self-consciously Byronic satire, the poem ‘L’Homme Moyen Sensuel’ which in a
letter to H.L Mencken he explained (to avoid it being cut):
        I can’t shorten it any more, and am inclined to think it would be better,
as it was in
        an earlier version, set down looser and longer. Note that the guts of all
satire (Don Juan for
        instance) are in the digressions, a propos de bottes, and that a Don Juan
canto is about the
                shortest length convenient for such digression […] My
business instinct, such as it is, makes
        me think the most advantageous thing all round would be to boom it as THE
                           satire, ‘best               since
        Byron.’ New York is accustomed to a new Keats and a new Shelley once a
fortnight and one
        might vary the note […] As to the best form. A long, really long narrative
like Juan is
               probably the best, but I am perfectly willing to recognise
the exigencies of S.S. [Smart set,
               Mencken’s magazine] and make each rip self-contained, as this
one is… Part of the trick is
               a hurrying rhythm.
Byron wrote ‘Beppo’ with an identical aim, a series of loosely linked but
self-contained satires, but moved onto Don Juan where the problem of form is
gleefully dismissed; what Pound found attractive in this was the
perspectives Byron could use within a single poem, the satiric possibilities
of having many voices operating in the same text but on different levels.
This spontaneity and freedom of form is behind the famous lines Pound was
later to preface to ‘Selected Cantos’, originally from Ur-Canto 1: “Say that
I dump my catch, shiny and silvery/ as fresh sardines slapping and slipping
on the marginal cobbles?”, though after the ur-Cantos were rejected by Pound
this satiric element is removed, and the focus moves onto masks as revealers
of self and Browning with his “hang it all!”. This creates its own problems
within the poetry, as the Romantic tradition into which Sordello falls is
one in which the subject of the poem must be special, worthy of elevation
above the ordinary, and of course the subject of these initial Cantos was
Pound’s search for the form and subject itself, leading to a desperate
assertion of vigour in the verse, characterised by Makin as “the vigorous
intervention of the poet [everywhere], vigorously seizing scraps of history
and giving them imaginative life”


It's a bit caught up in it's own righteousness, but i think makes the point
about Pound/ Byron better than my earlier post- but I must admit the
colossal egos of the two men had never clicked in my head before; need to
think about this more.

            Rich

_________________________________________________________________
Find a cheaper internet access deal - choose one to suit you.
http://www.msn.co.uk/internetaccess