On Wed, 10 Jun 1998, W. Freind wrote:
 
> On Wed, 10 Jun 1998, Tom McKeown wrote:
>
> (snip)
> > That is, he EARNED his right to experiment radically by first
> > experimenting seriously and at length with most conventional forms.
> > This means that he didn't stumble into the form of the Cantos because he
> > was incompetent with regular metre, but because he'd gone beyond it.
>
> Well, that's arguable. In April 1915, he submitted "L'Homme Moyen Sensuel"
> to _The Smart Set_, and the accompanying letter indicated he was planning
> on using that form for a yet-unnamed long poem. "L'Homme's" meter
> is pretty incompetent -- the whole thing is a dismal imitation of Byron --
> and it's hard to believe that Pound didn't have that in mind when he
> started what would be the _Cantos_ a few months later.
>
> Bill Freind
>
Must admit to agreeing with Bill here.  Pound's early metre is pretty
poor...flicking through _Personae_ and either the rhythm is so loose as to
be prose or so tight as (can't remember which poem it is I'm afraid
without checkng) to necessitate him eliding 'evanescent' to 'evan'scent'.
He also (throughout his career but v. noticeable early on) has this big
thing about ending lines on an unstressed syllable which gives them all a
very repetitive tone contour (what was it Eliot said about too obvious a
repeat being detrimental?).  I know Pound was a big propagandist for the
importance of rhythm and metre but I've never been overly convinced, just
as Wyndham lewis never was re: Vorticisim etc, that he was the greatest
exponent of what he preached.