>> there is no easy resource for pound as there is for
>> eliot or joyce.
>
>What about Terrell's guides?
 
again: not an easy resource. the cantos make more sense on their own. sure,
it's indexed and what not, but it is not accessable.
 
>so much is either overly (psudo)intellectual, or incredibly
>> reactionary. and there is so much of it. pound is not hard to understand so
>> much as the stigma surrounding pound is hard to get thru.
>
>Uh... I've been reading the Cantos for seven years now, and there's still
>a lot of it I don't understand.
 
what is there not to understand? the first time i read the cantos i was in
high school and was completely blown away. the last five or six times i've
read it i was just as blown away. but i really don't think that
understanding the cantos has anything to do with getting every little
reference, and i seriously doubt that pound himself even cared if anyone got
every reference. his work (as has been said so many times) is like
sculpture: you don't look at the eye of a figure by rodin to understand the
piece, you stand back and take it as a whole for it's emotional impact, etc.
("only emotion endures"). (but, of course, you -do- want to look at just the
eye to see the beauty of the craftsmanship, but that is not the same as
understanding.)
 
>> so much of what i have read concerning pound has been the same things stated
>> over and over again in what seems to be a vast hope to prove that the author
>> is -also- an intellectual because -they- can write about pound. but no new
>> ground is broken.
>
>Sounds like you aren't reading much. People like Leon Surette, Tim
>Redman, Jean-Michel Rabate, Robert Casillo and others have done a ton of
>really useful and original work. The best Pound criticism (with the
>exception of Hugh Kenner's work) has come out in the last five to ten
>years.
 
i don't think i've seen any of this. now -this- is the stuff that should be
easily found on the internet. i've searched and searched (maybe not in the
right places) for new things.
thanks for the names.
 
>> it's disgusting. the fact that poetry going into the 21st
>> c. is incresingly stagnant proves that there is more need for pound now than
>> ever. but us youngins are not given the help we need because there are too
>> many pound scholars fucking around instead of thinking.
>
>What poets are you reading? There's a buttload of really exciting poetry
>out there, but you're not going to find it in mainstream journals -- and a
>lot of it is influenced by Pound. Instead of ranting, go read.
 
i don't think i've found a poet that started writing after 1970 that i
really enjoy. (as for what i am reading... got zukofsky and creeley right
here in my bag. and, as my sig will attest, there is olson. anne waldman,
amiri baraka, ... what poets don't i read would be an easier question to
answer.)
 
=)
jeff.
 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
        There are no hierarchies, no infinite, no such many as mass,
        there are only
        eyes in all heads
        to be looked out of
 
                             -charles olson, from "letter 6" (of the maximus                                    poems)