Not that I agree with the critical stance taken by Garrick Davis ... but I
think he had in mind the kind of work that makes no recondite or arcane
allusions, when he used the term "self-sufficient". Take Hemingway's _ The
Old Man and the Sea _, for example; it alludes broadly to baseball in a way
that "everybody" would understand, not to its obscure statistics or to a
particularly dazzling double-play in the bottom of the 8th inning of some
game that has achieved legendary status among baseball fans, but in the
form of beloved teams.

To understand Hemingway's allusions requires a deep acculturation. To
understand Pound's allusions, on the other hand, requires extensive
book-learning and a cross-cultural, anthropological perspective.  As I
understood Garrick's question, it might be paraphrased so:  for an epic to
be a successful epic, doesn't it have to play to the deep acculturation of
a People, not the to book-learning and polyglot abilities of the elites?
The cross-cultural and the Epic don't seem to mix, do they?

My reply to that question would be this: the fair critic must ask how the
Cantos seeks to _transcend_ the epic genre with respect to  Place, Time,
People, Language, and the task set for its Hero.

Tim Romano