tim,
     yes, this is excellent... i see it now
...the embedded freudian image
...the quote from simeon
...the fear & loathing,
 & sickness unto death of the portrait.

...but the title still puzzles me?

bob

----- Original Message -----
From: Tim Romano <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, January 19, 2001 8:18 AM
Subject: Re: cantico del sole


> Bob,
> There is a recording of Pound reading this poem.  He delivers the brief
> dramatic monologue in a kind of stylized rant, his voice rising with each
> repetition of the phrase "the thought of what America" to a higher level
of
> anxiety and reaching a climax with "circulation... Oh!"  The falling
action,
> as it were, occurs with the phrase "It troubles my sleep."  The poem is
> indeed an "obsessive puritanic" bedtime reverie. The sexually repressed
> character  is kept awake at night worrying that the classics might reach
the
> American public. One imagines him trying with the prayer "Nunc dimittis"
to
> crowd out of his mind images of particular scenes from the classics. Did
the
> Latin prayer remind you of TS Eliot?  Take a gander at Wyndham Lewis's
first
> portrait of Eliot, the one where TSE is dressed in a dark green suit, his
> hands are folded nervously in his lap, and the front-lighting casts a
shadow
> on the wall behind the troubled poet.
> Tim