Mr Davis's (wilfully?) provocative post would appear to be premised on an a
priori notion of what an artwork should be, viz., "unified": "Considered as
an epic poem, as a unified work of art, the Cantos is a failure according to
any critical measure we wish to use."  I suspect that, in Mr Davis's
poetics, the phrase "unified work of art" is tautological; that is, he is
unable to consider the possibility of a dis-unified or disjunctive poetic
practice (hence his dislike for Maximus, among other post-Poundian long
poems).   Even if one were to accept Mr Davis's claim that the Cantos are/is
"nasty, obscure, fragmentary, and long" it does not follow that it fails
necessarily as a work of art. (Incidentally, is to be "nasty" to forsake the
aesthetic?  A large number of modernists possessed "nasty" views on class
(Woolf), race (Lewis, Eliot), gender (Faulkner) etc., etc.  Is this a reason
for not reading them?  My library would be quite depopulated!).
        I know there are many Poundians who view the Cantos as coherent and
unified; but if, for the sake of argument, one sees in the Cantos a
paratactic processual poetic that--regardless of Pound's intentions--resists
closure and totality, then the poem might be seen as forcing us to expand
our sense of what a long poem might _be_. I think that this is what is
genuinely avant-garde about the Cantos, and which still speaks to us--much
as Duchamp is still our contemporary.

        Regards and best wishes for the season,
        Alex Davis (no relation)

-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 19 December 2001 01:38
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: The Incoherence of the Cantos


Dear Pound Listmembers,

I would like to hear some discussion on the lasting importance of the
Cantos.
Is it the great epic poem of the 20th century or a complete mess?

It seems to me that, in the end, it is the great garbage heap of
Modernism--a
vast accumulation of (now annotated) passages from which the reader (or,
more
probably, the scholar) picks at random. It has a vast reputation among
scholars and poets--and yet it is formless and incoherent by any standard.
Its reputation (and example) has been pernicious. The Cantos is
"responsible"
for the other unreadable long poems of the Modernist era--like Olson's
Maximus or Merrill's The Changing Light at Sandover.

It is, in short, the perfect example of the excesses of Modernism and the
taste in poetry that it championed: nasty, obscure, fragmentary, and long.

If I may be permitted to quote myself:
"Considered as an epic poem, as a unified work of art, the Cantos is a
failure according to any critical measure we wish to use. It is so obscure
that a small army of scholars has gained tenure by annotating its lines, and

that enterprise has taken fifty years. It is so fragmentary that, even with
their notes, most of it seems willfully private in the worst way: like the
diary of an encryptionist, written for an audience of one. Without such
notes, of course, the poem is merely a terrifying, polylingual puzzle. It,
in
fact, depends upon the glosses of scholars to render it readable; it is
inscrutable without exegesis.  The Cantos is simply not a self-sufficient
work of art."

This question seems to be exemplified in the whole problem of addressing the

Cantos in the singular or plural form. The Cantos is or the Cantos are? Is
it
one thing or a miscellany?

Regards,
Garrick Davis
editor,
CPR (www.cprw.com)