The Cantos to a surprising extent will teach themselves if the reader
lets them. Modern literature was not my emphasis in grad school or
since, and when I began in 1956 to read the Cantos on my own there was
virtually no critical help available. My method was simply to keep
reading here and there making no particular effort to follow or 'decode'
as I went along. It wasn't long before a passage here or there came
alive. Some for obvious reasons: (quoted from memory)

In the gloom the gold gathers the light against it

If the hoarfrost grip thy tent,
Thou wilt give thanks when night is spent

The enormous tragedy of the dream in the peasant's bent shoulders

And yet say this to the Possum, with a bang not a whimper [this is
incorrect, but somethigng like that]

Lord of his  word and master of utterance
He turneth his word in its season and shape sit [again,not quite right I
think[

[Complete paraphrase -- Van Buren spefaking] I'm told that speech was
not a triumph of clarity. [Look this up, Canto 37? 39? It's a really
fine passage.]

---

Then after a year or so passages began to adhere to each other, and one
could move back and forth through the poem finding  passages which one
way or another echoed each other.

Then long passages in the Adams cantos or in the Pisan Cantos began to
come alive, both in themslves and echoing other parts of the poem.

The poem begins to take shape (as Pound predicts here and there: some
passage, for example, about the waves taking shape and freezing]

And so forth. It's a voyage of discovery for the reader, and even if
many passages remain opaque, still it is a wonderful voyage.

Carrol

 '

Michael Scott wrote:
> 
> i came late to office life but found that a regular lunch hour gave me
> an opportunity to read fat books slowly
> 
> so - in keeping with the times - i've begun on The Cantos
> 
> if no one objects i'm going to treat this list as my oracle - here's
> the first lazy question
> 
> the initial pages read like a ticker tape parade of history - are
> there fictional characters of Pound's own making in the Cantos - or is
> every name i meet someone i could go look up on Wikipedia