Margaret

Thanks very much for the additional information.  As I indicated in my note
to Burt, "tone leading of vowels" seems to have been a seminal idea of
Pound's which Duncan then developed for his own poetry.  If I can find any
further hard info I will share it of course.

Rick Seddon
McIntosh, NM

----- Original Message -----
From: "Fisher and Hughes" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, October 05, 2003 12:47 AM
Subject: Re: Pound/Duncan


> Dear Richard and Burt,
> The tone leading of the vowels may mean no more than the comment at the
> end of ABC of Reading regarding paying attention to the sequence of
> vowels. But also see a series of 3 drafts for the unpublished undated
> essay "Song" in the Beinecke archive, in which Pound, writing about
> setting words to music, refers to the "timbre" of the words and his use
> of them. In EP's Radio Operas, pp 156-7, I introduce the definition of
> melopoeia from the first and second drafts of this essay because of the
> focus on the crafting of sound: "Pound clarified melopoeia as dependent
> on 'the actual beat, rhythm, and timbre of [the] words for the emotional
> effect of [the] work.' Because this type of lyric poem was made to be
> 'delivered with varying pitch,' he called it 'cantabile' to distinguish
> it from poems intended to be spoken or half-chanted, and noted that the
> word sounds would be joined quite differently for melopoeia cantabile
> than for all other types of poetry."  [single quotes are from Song by EP]
> Best wishes,
> Margaret
>