Nostradamus predicted that before 2000 a dead man would sing with three
friends, a ship that sank once would sink again and David Centone
would write:
 
 
>I've been reading Hugh Kenner's _The Pound Era_, Peter Makin's _Pound's
>Cantos_, and Ezra Pound's _Cantos_ (I-XXX); I just picked upWilliam
>Cookson's _A Guide to the Cantos of Ezra Pound_, George Kearns' _The Cantos_
>and a couple other books on the subject.
>
>My thesis statement (at first to be explained in a 3 page prospectus and
>later in a 50 page thesis):
>
>Ezra Pound's Vorticism, as illustrated in Cantos I - XXX, employs the use of
>"subject-rhymes," in the form of historical and imagistic relations, where
>meanings develop as the context changes; with this in mind, the concept of
>order, itself, has become an issue (focus / theme) of Cantos -- appearing to
>be chaotic, their structure arises like a vortex, assuming the form of the
>transpiration of real-world events.
>
>I welcome any and all ideas.
>
I'm only a Pound fan, not a Pound scholar, but I would say that
the appearance of chaos revealing (gradually) a hidden structure
manifests more and more as the poem goes along, not just in I-XXX.
The poet sails
through history like Odysseus sailing for home. The structure and
meaning both change as more territory is visited. The question
of revision and/or "recantation" appears with each new block
as the poet learns more, not just at the end. The first American
Cantos revise the Rennaisance, the Chinese Cantos revise the
whole Occidental block, etc.
 
 
By the way,does anybody know where Pound got the line
about "the goddam Portagoose" becoming "England's oldest ally?"
 
mark
 
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