Re Time Bray and the Adams Cantos
 
I've tried to reserve judgement on the Adams Cantos (and the Chinese
History Cantos) because I think they were so important to Pound and to the
poem as a whole.  The latter is, I know, what Mary de Rachewiltz thinks,
and though I often disagree with her, she's always worth listening to.
 
My old professor Edward Tayler used to use the following as his final
exam: "Which text from this semester did you like least, and what
deficiency in you does that reveal?"
 
I'd like to know what makes these parts of the poem "tedious piffle."  I
also would like to suggest that bad poetry can be no less interesting than
good poetry.  At any rate, there is so much excellent work waiting to be
done on Pound's writings of the late 1930s.  If nothing else, we might
recall that the Chinese/Adams Cantos are written during a time when
Pound's anti-semitism is intensifying (note that Pound rewrites Adams's
memory of the Belgian tapestry depicting Jews attacking a communion wafer
so as to make Adams appear much more judeophobic than he appeared to have
been) and also during the time when radio is becoming a bigger and bigger
part of his future.
 
Jonathan Gill
Columbia University
 
 
On Tue, 7 Dec 1999, Tim Bray wrote:
 
> From: Jonathan P. Gill <[log in to unmask]>
> >The Adams
> > Cantos, surely among the least studied and appreciated portion of the
> > poem
>
> Or, one might say, "The Adams Cantos, usually rightly ignored on account of
> their being mostly tedious piffle..." -Tim
>