We've discussed Pound's narrative style in terms of film montage as
developed by Eisenstein.  I'd like to add now that for someone learning
to read the Cantos for the first time, it would be an excellent idea to
see the new film THE LIMEY by Steven Soderbergh (SEX LIES AND VIDEOTAPE
and OUT OF SIGHT).  In fact, seeing it more than once would probably be
very useful.
 
In my opinion, the editing in this film is more like Pound's technique in
the Cantos than anything else I have ever seen or read.
 
Unfortunately, the syntax and rhetoric of cinematic images has not
yet been developed to the point where we can talk about the prosody of a
film, but I do think it's clear that Soderbergh has nothing even close to
Pound's ability to construct beautiful lines.  But the way in which he
puts images together is very similar.
 
As we know, when Pound was first starting on the Cantos and trying to
figure out what he was doing, he once told Wm Butler Yeats that the
Cantos were intended to be like a Bach fugue.  Later he changed his mind,
but there certainly is a fugue-like element in the way that themes,
images, and phrases in the Cantos keep recurring.  (The phrase "ply over
ply," for instance, occurs in several different Cantos.)   This
fugue-like structure is another way in which Soderbergh's film ressembles
Pound's work.
 
There's no shortage of academics who have studied the Cantos
exhaustively, have written books on them, and can explain in detail
all the things Pound refers to.  But the true test of one's
understanding, in my opinion, would be to reach the point where one has
absorbed the work and understood Pound's thinking so thoroughly that one
can use his innovations as the basis for creating new work.  It seems in
some respects rather discouraging that the first person to succeed in
this task has been a filmmaker rather than a writer.
 
(Hey, my field is neither literature nor cinema.  If I'm mistaken about
this, let me know how I'm wrong.)
 
--Lee Lady  <Http://www2.Hawaii.Edu/~lady>