Sorry, now I'm really showing my iggurrance: what is "the ever-invaluable
Poetry and Prose"? Can you give us a flavour of what we will find if we turn
up the references?

(Please believe I do not ask out of laziness; I simply don't know the book
and doubt I shall be able to track it down in the near future).

I agree with the reservation implied in your phrase "the supposedly
simultaneous image". I would say that in so far as this notion of supposed
simultaneity continues into the method of the Cantos (and it is of course
inherent in the ideographic method), it is one of the reasons why the Cantos
"fail" at a structural level. A poem, least of all an epic poem, cannot have
its effect in an instant of time. It cannot be an object of contemplation
like a great crystal or "acorn of light".

Richard Edwards

>From: "Jonathan P. Gill" <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: - Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine
>    <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: petals
>Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000 08:52:06 -0500
>
>There's lots to gain from following the way Pound developed the supposedly
>instantaneous image in "In a Station of the Metro"--it was not the result
>of a sudden flash of inspiration, but the careful result of many months
>and many drafts, much pruning and selecting, which makes the incoherence
>of the image even more fascinating. It's possible to follow the whole
>process in one sitting via the ever-invaluable Poetry and Prose (See pp.
>147, 279, and 281 in Vol. I).
>
>It's also worth looking at Pound's poem "Laudantes Decem Pulchritudinis
>Johannae Temple," from Exultations (1909).  In this poem, Pound also uses
>the image of petals as faces.
>
>So much for first intensities!
>
>Jonathan Gill
>Columbia University

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