There was an interesting post just made where someone brought up the differences in aesthetics between EP and ZG. 

Another comparison that can be drawn from this absurd juxtaposition is the historical and geographic imaginations both writers devoted their creative talents towards. Pounds beautiful rendering of the Tang dynasty Yangzi river valley is fei chang fei chang mei li. His poetic recollection of the Anglo Saxon narrative also included in Cathay shares that element of the impossible place that ZG places his folk. The Western Shangri-La of ZG haunts the geographic "West" as does EP's Cantos describing Joseph Rock's Li Jiang, where the inspiration for "Lost Horizons'" Shangri-La supposedly came from. It might be a complete waste of time, but there might be something to carefully reading the landscape representations and how they affect the work as a whole.

Wan Shi Ru Yi
JMcD