Mr Davis writes: "I am puzzled by the misunderstanding produced by my remark

"self-sufficient work of art." In the context of the paragraph it appeared
in, I believe it is clear. The Cantos are not self-sufficient because they
require the aid of other books to understand."

1:  Well there goes Virgil and Dante!
2: Hmm: Even a rudimentary understanding of intertextuality would lead one
to grasp the fact that no text is sufficient unto itself.  A poem is
meaningful through a foreknowledge of the genre of poetry, an epic through a
preunderstanding of what "epic" signifies, and thus all texts are parasitic
upon one another, to a certain extent. Mallarme dreamed of Mr Davis's Le
Livre--but neither he nor any other poet has actually written it.
        Best,
        Alex Davis