I have been lurking on this list for about three years, and I'm not sure why
now I break my silence, except, perhaps, because this thread offers the
opportunity for an introduction.
 
Pound completely won me over when I was living in a small mountain community
in Colorado.  I was between graduate programs and as far (in climate and
geography) from my home in south Louisiana as I could get.  Alone, I would
for hours read Pound in a small unheated room above a cinder-block garage.
Was it "comfort" I felt among the coyotes' cries and my visible breath?
Perhaps, but the comfort a child finds upon awaking in the middle of the
night and hearing conversations in another room, perhaps a light crawling
under the door.  In other words, the Cantos allowed me to "keep company,"
allowed me to see in moments of isolation how Galileo was right--"and still
it moves."  Of course, the world of the Cantos can be just as disconcerting
(as I've found lately), but my point is that sentimental people will find
sentimental comfort, others other.  There is, after all, a "comfort" in
Oedipus that comes with the realization that the universe is order, but it's
"cold comfort" for Club-Foot.  "What thou lovest well remains . . ."
achieves a moment of climactic comfort (or consolation, though I'm making a
dangerous conflation here), but what kind of comfort?  It's a defiance of
mutability, of failure.  It's a moment comparable to the end of "The Battle
of Maldon" when Birhtwold says "Our hearts must be stronger, our courage
greater, because our strength wanes."   Courage is comfort, and sometimes,
at night, away from home, courage is the comfort one needs.
 
Michael Alleman