Pound's "difficulty" is such that it is tempting to seek out analogies with
other arts or other poetries in order to make him seem less unfamiliar.

Billy is not the only one to go in for this sort of thing. A good example is
Kenner's argument that Pound's technique is just like Wordsworth's in "A
slumber did my spirit seal". On first reading, we may think: "Of course!
Pound is not so difficult after all; poets have been doing this for ages,
only without our noticing it". On reflection, however, we find we are no
better able to understand Pound or Wordsworth than we were before. If
anything, the comparison merely distracts us from the particular problems of
the so-called "ideogrammatic method".


Richard Edwards
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