there was a time in my youth when i used to read in the old british
museum reading room - i'd fold a few sheets of a4 over to make a
little pamphlet notebook with a stitch to hold it together - in these
i'd copy phrases make notes of what i was reading - that's how the
cantos seemed to me - pound's notes
so reading the cantos was interesting but not as interesting as i
expected - it seemed rather too casually opaque - they weren't my notes
however one thing did emerge out of all this opacity that i really did
enjoy - his favourites his repetitions - the phrases that peppered his
brain - mud the fifth element springs to mind - but i'd have to dig
back into the text to list more examples
i got the impression that as he progressed with his great work he
became the prisoner of form - in the end he should have gleaned from
it his favourite phases and thrown the original away
shall we try it