> "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."
 
You obviously do not have Stalin's love of movies, but awonderful sense of
hyberbole and the absurb. Mr Soderbergh, the first?  I don't think so...
let us nominate Eisenstein if anyone, though I suspect you pass him by
more from the techincal deficicies of film at that period (compared to now).
But this was a simultaneous evolution. Eisenstein was NOT influenced by
Pound or vice versa.
 
If you wanna start nominating film directors why overlook Ford (The
Searchers),
or Mr Hitchcock (the "Pound" of suspense), or dare I say it? Ingmar
Bergmann.
And there are more.
 
Writers?  PiO in Melbourne has developed a rigrous and original poetry of
inner-city Melbourne migrants utilising voice and dialect in a way that
Pound (by comparison) only hinted at, and yet Pi's poetry is very definitely
a major innovation that has its source in Pound's poetry. The list of poets
is in fact endless!
 
When you speak of "new work", don't forget that the development of concrete
poetry is, in itself, a visual utilisation of Pound's ideas, and this form
was
already established well before Stoderbergh drew breath.
 
I am sure there are hundreds of other examples, but these few should
suffice to make the point.
 
with respect
Stoneking
 
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: Everett Lee Lady <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, December 01, 1999 6:35 AM
Subject: Montage and Reading the Cantos
 
 
> 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>
>